Roughly 252 million years ago, Earth experienced its deadliest known extinction. Known as the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction, or “The Great Dying,” this cataclysm wiped out over 80% of marine ...

Roughly 2.5 million years ago, a nearby star exploded. Around the same time, the diversity of viruses infecting fish in Africa’s Lake Tanganyika rose dramatically. Three researchers from the ...

The Permian period, stretching from around 299 to 252 million years ago, was a time of extraordinary ecological richness, a time when early forests blanketed the Earth and many reptile-like and ...

Earth responded to its most severe past warming event by evolving a new and bizarre type of photosynthesis that allowed a ...

Earth has never stood still. Over its 4.5 billion years of history, our planet has been reshaped by different cataclysms and climate shifts. The atmosphere went through several changes, oceans froze ...