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 ...

Scientists discovered that ancient reef-building stromatoporoids survived the Late Devonian extinction, contrary to previous beliefs, and continued to thrive. The findings reveal how these organisms ...

Modern humans have existed for only a tiny fraction of Earth’s history. During that time, our species has survived ice ages, ...

Research led by the University of Alabama found that widespread wildfires during one of Earth's ancient environmental crises ...

Last year, hiking in Morocco’s eastern Atlas Mountains, I found an ammonite, a fossil of those spiral-shape cephalopods that to many symbolize paleontology itself. The fossilization process had turned ...

A team of Moroccan researchers has identified a new species of trace fossil left by trilobites roughly 360 million years ago in the eastern Anti-Atlas mountains. The study was published online ...

There have been five unquestionably great extinctions on earth: the end-Ordovician, the late-Devonian, the end-Permian, end-Triassic, and the end-Cretaceous extinctions. Some think we are now in a ...

A recently published study puts forth a new theory that volcanic eruptions combined with widespread ocean detoxification pushed Earth's biology to a tipping point in the Late Devonian era, triggering ...

Will modern coral reefs go extinct? The answer is uncertain, but some of their ancient counterparts managed to dodge a bullet — for a while, at least. Scientists from Osaka Metropolitan University ...