For a long time, the prevailing theory was that dinosaurs were already in decline before the Chicxulub asteroid struck Earth ...

About 66 million years ago – perhaps on a downright unlucky day in May – an asteroid smashed into our planet. Even groups that weathered the catastrophe, such as mammals, fishes and flowering plants, ...

Could we be on the verge of the sixth mass extinction? To better understand what’s to come for life on Earth–and the current harm we’re doing to our own environment–we have to look into the past.

A funding crisis at the Museum of the Earth and the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, N.Y., could scatter priceless specimens and end nearly a century of pioneering research.

A spectacular fossil trove on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen shows that marine life made a stunning comeback after Earth’s ...

Tropical riparian ecosystems—those found along rivers and wetlands—recovered much faster than expected following the end-Permian mass extinction around 252 million years ago, according to new research ...

Some animals have been around since the time of the dinosaurs—and they’re still thriving today! Known as “living fossils,” ...

Fossil evidence from North China suggests that some ecosystems may have recovered within just two million years of the end-Permian mass extinction, much sooner than previously thought. Tropical ...

More than 250 million years ago, life on Earth faced its most devastating crisis — a global event so severe that it wiped out nearly three-quarters of life on land and an even larger share in the ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Stewart Edie, Smithsonian Institution (THE CONVERSATION) About 66 million years ago – ...