A supernova gamma ray burst that could extinguish all life on Earth is one apocalyptic scenario that doesn’t get much airtime in the mass media. Asteroids and global warming tend to hog the headlines, probably due to the fact that they are much closer to home; well, in our local solar system anyway, whereas a […]
Earth’s history has been punctuated by a number of mass extinctions wiping out nearly all life forms on the planet. What caused these catastrophic events is still unknown, but many scientists hypothesize that heavenly bodies crashing into the Earth could have pushed the global reset button. But are these extinctions really due to asteroid impacts, […]
When species become asexual they could be taking the first step to extinction, say researchers from Imperial College London. They’ve been studying the genetic structure of Penicillium marneffei, an asexual fungus only found in parts of south-east Asia. Their research, appearing in PLoS Pathogens, found that although P. marneffei spores were able to spread over […]
Carnivore species are more at risk of extinction due to their own intrinsic biological attributes than from an increasing human population with whom they share their space, says a new study published in PLoS Biology. Researchers looking at all 280 carnivore species around the world estimated the risk of their extinction by 2030 based on […]
