The cause of the Devonian period extinction 359 million years ago, ranked as one of the five great extinctions of life on Earth, remains a mystery. Now, a new study reveals the explosion of a nearby ...

Safe distance: supernova SN 1987A as seen by the ESO Schmidt Telescope. Located 168,000 light-years away, this object posed no danger to Earth. (Courtesy: ESO) The explosion of a nearby star could ...

The late Devonian extinction is one of the five major extinction events to have occurred on Earth. It's not unusual for scientists to argue over what causes a mass extinction event -- of the five, the ...

The Late Devonian mass extinction (roughly 372 million years ago) was one of five mass extinctions in Earth’s history, with roughly 75% of all species disappearing over its course. It happened in two ...

Most scientists think the dinosaurs — along with countless other creatures — were wiped out some 66 million years ago when a space rock slammed into Earth. But a cosmic impact isn’t the only disaster ...

Diverse and full of sea life, the Earth’s Devonian era — taking place more than 370 million years ago — saw the emergence of the first seed-bearing plants, which spread as large forests across the ...

Mass extinctions are very important to how life evolved on Earth. For example, when an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago, the resulting dinosaur extinction led mammals to take their place.

Over the roughly 4.5 billion years of Earth's existence, there have been several periods were biodiversity has been nearly wiped out - extinction events. There have been several proposals to explain ...

The Late Devonian mass extinction (roughly 372 million years ago) was one of five mass extinctions in Earth's history, with roughly 75% of all species disappearing over its course. It happened in two ...

A team of researchers led by professor Brian Fields hypothesizes that a supernova about 65 light-years away may have contributed to the ozone depletion and subsequent mass extinction of the late ...

A paper released this week by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign astronomy and physics professor Brian Fields makes a case for distant supernovae as a cause of a past mass extinction ...