A recently published study puts forth a new theory that volcanic eruptions combined with widespread ocean detoxification pushed Earth's biology to a tipping point in the Late Devonian era, triggering ...

The Late Devonian represents a critical interval in Earth’s history, marked by a profound restructuring of marine biodiversity and a series of mass extinction events. This period witnessed extensive ...

Scientists discovered that ancient reef-building stromatoporoids survived the Late Devonian extinction, contrary to previous beliefs, and continued to thrive. The findings reveal how these organisms ...

Two of Earth’s five confirmed mass extinction events could have been caused by nearby supernova explosions stripping the ...

Our planet’s first known mass extinction happened about 440 million years ago. Species diversity on Earth had been increasing over a period of roughly 30 million years, but that would come to a halt ...

Last year, hiking in Morocco’s eastern Atlas Mountains, I found an ammonite, a fossil of those spiral-shape cephalopods that to many symbolize paleontology itself. The fossilization process had turned ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The common ancestor of all tetrapods (including humans ...

Diverse and full of sea life, the Earth's Devonian era—taking place more than 370 million years ago—saw the emergence of the first seed-bearing plants, which spread as large forests across the ...

Will modern coral reefs go extinct? The answer is uncertain, but some of their ancient counterparts managed to dodge a bullet — for a while, at least. Scientists from Osaka Metropolitan University ...