The second-largest mass extinction in Earth’s history took place in a period of stresses from non-sulfidic anoxia in shelf areas, together with glacioeustatic sea-level change and climatic cooling.
extinctions
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Mammoths Lost Their Steppe Habitat to Climate Change
Ancient plant and animal DNA buried in Arctic sediments preserve a 50,000-year history of Arctic ecosystems, suggesting that climate change contributed to mammoth extinction.
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A Little-Known Mass Extinction and the “Dawn of the Modern World”
Volcanic eruptions in what is now western Canada may have triggered a million years of rain and a mass extinction that launched the reign of the dinosaurs.
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Did Ozone Loss Cause the End Devonian Mass Extinction?
Ozone loss, perhaps as a consequence of a warming climate, may have been responsible for a catastrophic loss of biodiversity.
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Extinct Megatoothed Shark May Have Been Warm-Blooded
Preliminary results from a recent study may begin to shed light on why megalodons died out before the most recent ice age.
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How Did Life Recover After Earth’s Worst-Ever Mass Extinction?
Ocean animals at the top of the food chain recovered first after a cataclysm at the end of the Permian period. The extinction was triggered by events resembling the changes brewing in today’s oceans.
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Peruvian Mountain Birds Take an “Escalator to Extinction”
As the climate warms, tropical birds living in the mountains are retreating to higher elevations to avoid the heat. What happens when they run out of mountain slope to escape to?
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A Volcanic Trigger for Earth’s First Mass Extinction?
Abnormally high levels of mercury in Ordovician rocks may imply that a huge surge of volcanism took place at a time when much of the planet’s ocean life vanished.