252 million years ago, the Earth was in a really bad place. At the boundary of the Permian and Triassic periods, our biosphere experienced its most dramatic mass extinction event (so far), one so utterly complete that it has been solemnly termed the “Great Dying.” Precious little was spared, and it’s generally been…
If the fact that the Earth is careening toward a sixth mass extinction event makes you uncomfortable, good news: it turns out, the biosphere may have rebounded “quickly” after the worst mass extinction in history. That, at least, is the implication of one remarkable fossil assemblage formed less than 2 million years…
It’s nothing to lose sleep over—really, I promise—but Earth’s atmosphere is leaking oxygen. Atmospheric oxygen levels have dropped by 0.7 percent over the past 800,000 years, and while scientists aren’t sure why, they’re rather excited about it.
The sixth mass extinction—the one that seven billion humans are doing their darnedest to trigger at this very moment—is shaping up to be like nothing our planet has ever seen. That’s the conclusion of a sweeping new analysis, which compared marine fossil records from Earth’s five previous mass extinction events to…
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 to do it? One popular scheme involves releasing truckloads of nuclear warheads over the poles, unlocking billions of tons of frozen carbon dioxide and triggering a runaway greenhouse.
Buried inside ancient grains of rock salt, a team of geologists has discovered traces of a breathable, animal-friendly atmosphere. If confirmed, the finding will push back the rise of oxygen on Earth hundreds of millions of years, raising new questions about the evolution of complex life both here and beyond our solar…
Four billion years ago, an endless barrage of space rock pummeled the surface of the Earth and the Moon, in a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. Now, astronomers have performed a detailed analysis of one of the most famous craters from that time, and what they’ve learned could rewrite the most violent chapter…
If a massive solar storm struck the Earth today, it could wipe out our technology and hurl us back to the dark ages. Lucky for us, events like this are quite rare. But four billion years ago, extreme space weather was probably the norm. And rather than bringing the apocalypse, it might have kickstarted life.
Life has been transforming Earth’s atmosphere since the first single-celled organisms evolved. But few instances of atmospheric terraforming compare with what went down 2.7 billion years ago, when air pressure seems to have plummeted to less than half of its current value. What could have caused the worldwide…
How the dinosaurs went extinct is a contentious topic of endless scientific debate. Were they killed by a giant asteroid, a rash of volcanic eruptions, or some deadly combination of the two? Or, perhaps, we’ve been thinking about the problem all wrong.
History has a way of repeating itself. Humans are currently conducting a grand experiment with Earth’s climate, but the outcome of that experiment may be foretold. According to Penn State climate scientist Richard Alley, the future—or a somewhat diluted version of it—happened 55.9 million years ago.
If we want to know what sorts of creatures will survive the next mass extinction, the best place to look is the fossil record. After examining the bones of Lystrosaurus, a vertebrate that famously thrived during the worst apocalypse in the history of life on Earth, a team of paleontologists think they know how it…
Carbon hasn’t entered our atmosphere this quickly in at least 66 million years—since an asteroid slammed into our planet and wiped out the dinosaurs, or perhaps even earlier. Our addiction to fossil fuels has pushed the planet into a “no-analog” state that’s “likely to result in widespread future extinctions,” an…
A hundred million years ago, ichthyosaurs—massive marine reptiles that look like a dolphin mated with a fish—ruled Earth’s oceans. But nearly 30 million years before the extinction of the dinosaurs, these badass predators vanished. It wasn’t an asteroid that killed the ichthyosaurs, so what did?
Sixty-six million years ago, planet Earth had a shit day when a six-mile-wide asteroid smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula, triggering a series of events that killed off the dinosaurs. Later this month, a scientific expedition will drill into the heart of Chicxulub crater for the very first time, seeking to learn more…
The extinction at the end of the Permian period 252 million years ago was one of the darkest chapters in the history of life. Up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial life forms vanished in a geologic blink.
For nearly 40 years, paleontologists have argued over what really killed the dinosaurs. Was it an massive asteroid impact, or a spate of volcanic eruptions? Or what if a powerful impact ignited volcanoes, walloping Earth’s biosphere with a deadly 1-2 punch?
Though every child is taught about ancient history in school, rarely are we ever taught to plan for the future beyond our own lifetimes. What is holding us back from thinking about tomorrow? Philosopher JL Schellenberg has some ideas.
