Earth has a long and dramatic history, and one recurring theme is extinction. Did you know that over the last 500 million years, our planet experienced five major mass extinction events? These events ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An image of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), the remnant of a massive star that exploded about 300 years ago ...

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 new analysis suggests that recent extinctions have been rare, limited mostly to islands and slowing. But others argue this is all just semantics.

A comet explosion may explain mass extinctions 13,000 years ago, linking the Clovis people's vanishing and mammoth die-off to ...

It's safe to say that most of us are familiar with the concept of mass extinction. But this is by no means a recent ...

New research shows that while many species have disappeared, extinctions of genera are very rare across plants and animals.

Violent supernovas may have caused two of Earth’s largest mass extinctions that have never been completely explained, according to a theory put forward in new research.During the final stages of a ...