Carbon dioxide emissions are acidifying the planet’s oceans at a rate 10 times faster than occurred in the lead up to past mass extinctions of marine organisms, say an international team of researchers. Their study, appearing in the journal Science, analyzed paleontological records over the past 300 million years and concluded that the chemistry of […]
Algae, rather than asteroids, were the key to the end of the dinosaurs, claims a new study that notes that current environmental conditions show a significant similarity to the periods in the past when mass extinctions occurred. Clemson University geologist James W. Castle and ecotoxicologist John H. Rodgers have spent two years analyzing data from […]
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, […]
