http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. If the planet is headed for another mass extinction like the previous five, each of which wiped out more than 75 percent of all species on the planet, then North American mammals are one-fifth to one-half the way there, according to a University of California, Berkeley, and Pennsylvania State University analysis. http://www.physorg.com/news180273689.html Biology Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:02:16 EST news180273689 A new fossil species suggests that some land animals may have survived the end-Permian extinction by living in cooler climates in Antarctica. Researchers have identified a distant relative of mammals that apparently survived the mass extinction by living in Antarctica. http://www.physorg.com/news179001673.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:42:01 EST news179001673 Super Earths are named for their size, but these planets - which range from about 2 to 10 Earth masses - could be superior to the Earth when it comes to sustaining life. They could also provide an answer to the ‘Fermi Paradox`: Why haven`t we been visited by aliens? http://www.physorg.com/news178821471.html Space & Earth Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:38:28 EST news178821471 Arnie Miller, University of Cincinnati professor of paleontology in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, and co-author Michael Foote of the University of Chicago publish their research in the Nov. 20 issue of Science with their paper, "Epicontinental Seas Versus Open-Ocean Settings: The Kinetics of Mass Extinction and Origination." http://www.physorg.com/news177873594.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:23:28 EST news177873594 Algae, not asteroids, were the key to the end of the dinosaurs, say two Clemson University researchers. Geologist James W. Castle and ecotoxicologist John H. Rodgers have published findings that toxin producing algae were a deadly factor in mass extinctions millions of years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news175179438.html Space & Earth Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:50:19 EST news175179438 Smithsonian researchers working in Colombia's Cerrejón coal mine have unearthed the first megafossil evidence of a neotropical rainforest. Titanoboa, the world's biggest snake, lived in this forest 58 million years ago at temperatures 3-5 C warmer than in rainforests today, indicating that rainforests flourished during warm periods. http://www.physorg.com/news174580793.html Other Sciences Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:04:39 EST news174580793 (PhysOrg.com) -- In 1979, Luis Alvarez and his collaborators stunned the world with their discovery that an asteroid impact 65 million years ago probably killed off the dinosaurs and much of the the world's living organisms. But ever since, there has been an ongoing debate about how long it took for life to return to the devastated planet and for ecosystems to bounce back. http://www.physorg.com/news173697440.html Space & Earth Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:17:56 EST news173697440 (PhysOrg.com) -- Reptiles changed their walking posture from sprawling to upright immediately after the end-Permian mass extinction, the biggest crisis in the history of life that occurred some 250 million years ago and wiped out 90% of all species. http://www.physorg.com/news172221271.html Other Sciences Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:15:10 EST news172221271 After the End-Permian extinction 252.6 million years ago, ammonoids diversified and recovered 10 to 30 times faster than previous estimates. http://www.physorg.com/news171127849.html Other Sciences Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:40:01 EST news171127849 (PhysOrg.com) -- Global calamities like the one that doomed most dinosaurs forever alter the varieties of life found on Earth, but new research shows that it doesn't take a catastrophe to end entire lineages. An analysis of 200 million years of history for marine clams found that vulnerability to extinction runs in evolutionary families, even when the losses result form ongoing, background rates of extinction. http://www.physorg.com/news168790694.html Biology Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:19:14 EST news168790694 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have debated how many mass extinction events in Earth's history were triggered by a space body crashing into the planet's surface. Most agree that an asteroid collision 65 million years ago brought an end to the age of dinosaurs, but there is uncertainty about how many other extinctions might have resulted from asteroid or comet collisions with Earth. http://www.physorg.com/news168183769.html Space & Earth Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:30:01 EST news168183769 (PhysOrg.com) -- Drifting across the world's oceans are a group of unicellular marine microorganisms that are not only a crucial source of food for other marine life -- but their fossils, which are found in abundance, provide scientists with an extraordinary record of climatic change and other major events in the history of the earth. http://www.physorg.com/news166790588.html Biology Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:43:50 EST news166790588 A previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260million years ago has been uncovered by scientists at the University of Leeds. http://www.physorg.com/news162738601.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 May 2009 14:13:04 EST news162738601 (PhysOrg.com) -- In the past 50 years it has become commonplace to think of Earth as a nurturing place, straining mightily to maintain equilibrium so that life might continue and flourish. http://www.physorg.com/news162045215.html Other Sciences Wed, 20 May 2009 13:34:10 EST news162045215 (PhysOrg.com) -- Were major extinction events real biological catastrophes or were they merely the result of gaps in the fossil record? Research by a team of geologists from the Universities of Bristol, Plymouth, and Saratov State in Russia, has shed new light on a debate that has divided scientists of late and was recognised as far back as Darwin`s Origin of Species. http://www.physorg.com/news160663448.html Space & Earth Mon, 04 May 2009 13:44:41 EST news160663448 A Princeton University geoscientist who has stirred controversy with her studies challenging a popular theory that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs has compiled powerful new evidence asserting her position. http://www.physorg.com/news160655449.html Space & Earth Mon, 04 May 2009 11:31:44 EST news160655449 Dinosaurs were dying out much earlier than the mass extinction event 65 million years ago, Natural History Museum scientists report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society journal today. http://www.physorg.com/news160324445.html Other Sciences Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:34:45 EST news160324445 (PhysOrg.com) -- The enduringly popular theory that the Chicxulub crater holds the clue to the demise of the dinosaurs, along with some 65 percent of all species 65 million years ago, is challenged in a paper to be published in the Journal of the Geological Society on April 27, 2009. http://www.physorg.com/news160028871.html Space & Earth Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:28:29 EST news160028871 The largest mass extinction in the history of the earth could have been triggered off by giant salt lakes, whose emissions of halogenated gases changed the atmospheric composition so dramatically that vegetation was irretrievably damaged. At least that is what an international team of scientists have reported in the most recent edition of the "Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences" (Dokladi Earth Sciences). http://www.physorg.com/news157619907.html Space & Earth Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:19:08 EST news157619907 VIB researchers connected to Ghent University, Belgium, have discovered that DNA duplications have given plants an evolutionary advantage. This mechanism enabled plants -- in contrast to the dinosaurs -- to survive the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction of 65 million years ago. With the aid of the latest bioinformatics technologies, the researchers have been able to closely estimate the timing of known DNA duplications in a number of plant species. http://www.physorg.com/news157048697.html Biology Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:39:08 EST news157048697 (PhysOrg.com) -- New scientific findings by geologist Robert Gastaldo of Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and colleagues call into question popular theories about the largest mass extinction in Earth's history. http://www.physorg.com/news155238422.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:47:36 EST news155238422 The Earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of both plants and animals, with nearly 50 percent of all species disappearing, scientists say. http://www.physorg.com/news143738612.html Biology Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:23:32 EST news143738612 The shorelines of ancient Alberta, British Columbia and the Canadian Arctic were an important refuge for some of the world's earliest animals, most of which were wiped out by a mysterious global extinction event some 252 million years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news142069249.html Space & Earth Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:40:49 EST news142069249 Amphibians, reigning survivors of past mass extinctions, are sending a clear, unequivocal signal that something is wrong, as their extinction rates rise to unprecedented levels, according to a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Humans are exacerbating two key natural threats - climate change and a deadly disease that is jumping from one species to another. http://www.physorg.com/news137692714.html Biology Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:58:34 EST news137692714 University of Alberta scientists contend they have the answer to mass extinction of animals and plants 93 million years ago. The answer, research has uncovered, has been found at the bottom of the sea floor where lava fountains erupted, altering the chemistry of the sea and possibly of the atmosphere. http://www.physorg.com/news135432196.html Space & Earth Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:03:16 EST news135432196