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An extinction event (also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp fall in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms .
A growing number of scientists believe a sixth mass extinction event of a magnitude equal to the prior five has been unfolding for the past 10,000 years as humans have made their mark around the ...
Since then, the debate about the extinction of the dinosaurs and other mass extinction events has centered on whether the extinction mechanism was the asteroid impact, widespread volcanism (which occurred about the same time), or some other mechanism or combination. Most of the mechanisms suggested are catastrophic in nature.
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." — Lewis Carroll [4]. In 1973, Leigh Van Valen proposed the hypothesis as an "explanatory tangent" to explain the "law of extinction" known as "Van Valen's law", [1] which states that the probability of extinction does not depend on the lifetime of the species or higher-rank taxon, instead being constant ...
Scientists are using a UC Santa Cruz greenhouse to recreate the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. They want to learn why some species survived when so many did not.
Luis Walter Alvarez, left, and his son Walter, right, at the K–T Boundary in Gubbio, Italy, 1981. The Alvarez hypothesis posits that the mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other living things during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by the impact of a large asteroid on the Earth.
The Lilliput effect, a term coined to describe a phenomenon wherein organisms shrink in size following a mass extinction, affected megalodontid bivalves, [20] whereas file shell bivalves experienced the Brobdingnag effect, the reverse of the Lilliput effect. [21] There is some evidence of a bivalve cosmopolitanism event during the mass ...
Extinction: The Facts is a 2020 documentary film by the natural historian David Attenborough which aired on the BBC. It depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, caused by humans, and the consequences of biodiversity loss and climate change. It also suggests positive action which can be taken to halt or reverse these effects.