deep time

Traditional nature writing explores the majesty of earth’s topographies—its fields and streams and mountains—those…

In 100 million years, human civilization will have bit the dust. Perhaps a nuclear war scorched the planet, or a…

Coal, that ancient dead plant stuff responsible for electrifying the world and blackening the lungs of millions, is…

252 million years ago, the Earth was in a really bad place. At the boundary of the Permian and Triassic periods, our…

If the fact that the Earth is careening toward a sixth mass extinction event makes you uncomfortable, good news: it…

It’s nothing to lose sleep over—really, I promise—but Earth’s atmosphere is leaking oxygen. Atmospheric oxygen…

The sixth mass extinction—the one that seven billion humans are doing their darnedest to trigger at this very…

For the record, planet Earth is still in the Holocene.

Terraforming Mars could be our only option once we screw this planet up beyond repair, but how exactly are we going…

Buried inside ancient grains of rock salt, a team of geologists has discovered traces of a breathable,…

Four billion years ago, an endless barrage of space rock pummeled the surface of the Earth and the Moon, in a period…

If a massive solar storm struck the Earth today, it could wipe out our technology and hurl us back to the dark ages.…

Life has been transforming Earth’s atmosphere since the first single-celled organisms evolved. But few instances of…

How the dinosaurs went extinct is a contentious topic of endless scientific debate. Were they killed by a giant…

History has a way of repeating itself. Humans are currently conducting a grand experiment with Earth’s climate, but…

If we want to know what sorts of creatures will survive the next mass extinction, the best place to look is the…

Carbon hasn’t entered our atmosphere this quickly in at least 66 million years—since an asteroid slammed into our…

A hundred million years ago, ichthyosaurs—massive marine reptiles that look like a dolphin mated with a fish—ruled…

Sixty-six million years ago, planet Earth had a shit day when a six-mile-wide asteroid smashed into the Yucatán…

The extinction at the end of the Permian period 252 million years ago was one of the darkest chapters in the history…