Supernova destroying planet, illustration. A rocky planet lies in the wake of its star, which has just gone supernova. The explosion shatters the planet. A complete census of massive stars in our part ...

A mass extinction event is a term used to describe a large-scale event that wipes out species. It is usually not a short, one-time incident but rather something that occurs over thousands or millions ...

Sharks might be the all time bullet-dodging champions. They’ve been around for about 450 million years, longer than trees, longer than the rings of Saturn, and longer than most of the other life on ...

From the Black Death to the 1918 influenza and beyond, history reveals how viruses have pushed humanity to the brink multiple ...

A spectacular fossil trove on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen shows that marine life made a stunning comeback after Earth’s ...

Everyone knows that dinosaurs are extinct, and most people have some idea about how it might have occurred. But the exact periods in history when it happened are less well known. Was it a single ...

Russell has a PhD in the history of medicine, violence, and colonialism. His research has explored topics including ethics, science governance, and medical involvement in violent contexts. Russell has ...

Most people think of crocodilians as living fossils—stubbornly unchanged, prehistoric relics that have ruled the world's swampiest corners for millions of years. But their evolutionary history tells a ...

But if there is one thing we’ve learned from the history of past mass extinctions, it is (with a nod to “Jurassic Park”): “Life finds a way.” The post The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs, As Explained by ...

The Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, occurring approximately 66 million years ago, represents one of the most dramatic biotic crises in Earth’s history. It is marked by the abrupt disappearance ...