Tag Archives: Extinction

The Permian period, spanning from 299 to 252 million years ago, marked a crucial era in Earth’s history. The end of this period witnessed the most devastating mass extinction, known as the Great Dying, which wiped out nearly 70% of land-dwelling species and a much larger proportion of marine life. Recent findings in southern Africa have started to illuminate the …

Honey bees are essential pollinators, responsible for around 75% of flowering plants and 35% of food crops worldwide. Without them, global food systems and biodiversity would face serious threats. However, honey bee populations have been in decline due to poor nutrition, habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. In response, researchers from Washington State University (WSU) and APIX Biosciences in Belgium …

At the turn of the century, HIV was so rampant in Botswana that politicians and doctors viewed it as an existential threat. One in eight infants were reported to be infected at birth, while rates of mother to child transmission either through pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding ranged from between 20 and 40%, according to UNAIDS. Between 1990 and 2000, mortality …

An international team of researchers is looking for answers behind the mystery of Gigantopithecus blacki, a giant prehistoric primate that once lived in what is now southern China. The species is known from its teeth and mandibles found in cave sites. The fossils suggest it was the largest primate ever, with estimates of its size ranging from about …

Daniel Rothman works on the top floor of the building that houses the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, a big concrete domino that overlooks the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rothman is a mathematician interested in the behaviour of complex systems, and in the Earth he has found a worthy subject. Specifically, Rothman …

After years of digging across Africa, scientists have built a clearer picture of life just before Earth’s worst die-off. New fossils reveal bustling ecosystems in southern Pangea, from burrowers to tusked plant-eaters to saber-toothed hunters. The fossils show which species thrived before the “Great Dying” and hint at why so many vanished. A team led by researchers at the University …

In a groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, an international team of paleontologists has uncovered a rich treasure trove of Permian fossils from southern Africa. These fossils, excavated over 15 years, offer unprecedented insights into the life forms that inhabited Earth just before the planet’s largest mass extinction, known as the Great Dying. This extinction event occurred …

Paleontologists have identified the myriad of animals — saber-toothed predators, burrowing foragers and a large, salamander-like creature — that thrived in southern Pangea just before the end-Permian mass extinction, about 252 million years ago. An artistic rendering of an evening approximately 252 million years ago during the Late Permian epoch in the Luangwa Basin of Zambia. The scene includes several …

Mass Extinction Unleashed a 5-Million-Year Heatwave. Here’s What Triggered It  SciTechDaily The Great Dying  Honi Soit The 5-Million-Year Heatwave That Followed Earth’s Deadliest Extinction: Here’s What Triggered It  The Daily Galaxy Mega volcanoes, asteroid impacts and global cooling: The five deadly mass extinctions that changed life on Earth as we know it forever  BBC Wildlife Magazine Source link

A recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment provides a stark warning about the ocean’s future: the looming oxygen crisis may threaten key marine species, including the crucial lanternfish. Using over 10,000 years of fossil records, researchers have found that lanternfish populations drastically declined whenever oxygen levels in the ocean fell below a critical threshold. As ocean temperatures rise …