Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Extinction event”
Periodically, in the vast spans of time that have preceded us, our planet’s living beings have been purged by planetary catastrophes so extreme they make your typical Ice Age look like the geological equivalent of a stroll in the park. Scientists count just five mass extinctions in an unimaginably long expanse of 450 million years, but they warn we may …
Introduction One of the greatest threats to the survival of the human species and the biosphere is catastrophic climate change. Scientists warn that if the transition to renewable energy does not happen within very few decades, there is a danger that we will reach a tipping point beyond which feedback loops, such as the albedo effect and the methane hydrate …
We are in the middle of the first great mass extinction since the end of the age of the dinosaurs. That’s the conclusion of a shocking new study published Friday in a journal called Science Advances. The study, which was conducted by a group of scientists from some of the United States’ leading universities, found that over the past century-plus, vertebrate species …
The Earth has entered a new period of extinction, a study by three US universities has concluded, and humans could be among the first casualties. The report, led by the universities of Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley, said vertebrates were disappearing at a rate 114 times faster than normal. The findings echo those in a report published by Duke University last year. One …
In case you weren’t already worried about the current and rapid acidification of the world’s oceans, a new report by leading scientists finds that this very phenomenon is to blame for the worst mass extinction event the planet earth has ever seen—approximately 252 million years ago. The findings, published this week in the journal Science by University of Edinburgh researchers, raise serious concerns about …
Changes to the Earth’s oceans, caused by extreme volcanic activity, triggered the greatest extinction of all time, a study suggests. The event, which took place 252 million years ago, wiped out more than 90 per cent of marine species and more than two-thirds of the animals living on land. It happened when Earth’s oceans absorbed huge amounts of carbon dioxide …
