Safe distance: supernova SN 1987A as seen by the ESO Schmidt Telescope. Located 168,000 light-years away, this object posed no danger to Earth. (Courtesy: ESO) The explosion of a nearby star could ...

The late Devonian extinction is one of the five major extinction events to have occurred on Earth. It's not unusual for scientists to argue over what causes a mass extinction event -- of the five, the ...

The cause of the Devonian period extinction 359 million years ago, ranked as one of the five great extinctions of life on Earth, remains a mystery. Now, a new study reveals the explosion of a nearby ...

A paper released this week by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign astronomy and physics professor Brian Fields makes a case for distant supernovae as a cause of a past mass extinction ...

The Late Devonian mass extinction (roughly 372 million years ago) was one of five mass extinctions in Earth’s history, with roughly 75% of all species disappearing over its course. It happened in two ...

The Late Devonian mass extinction (roughly 372 million years ago) was one of five mass extinctions in Earth's history, with roughly 75% of all species disappearing over its course. It happened in two ...

Mass extinctions are very important to how life evolved on Earth. For example, when an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago, the resulting dinosaur extinction led mammals to take their place.

Over the roughly 4.5 billion years of Earth's existence, there have been several periods were biodiversity has been nearly wiped out - extinction events. There have been several proposals to explain ...

ANN ARBOR—Mass extinctions, like lotteries, result in a multitude of losers and a few lucky winners. This is the story of one of the winners, a small, shell-crushing predatory fish called Fouldenia, ...