Extinction
Giant ‘Toothed’ Birds Flew Over Antarctica 40 Million Years Ago
Picture Antarctica today and what comes to mind? Large ice floes bobbing in the Southern Ocean? Maybe a remote outpost populated with scientists from around the world? Or perhaps colonies...
Primates Are Facing an Extinction Crisis, But Conservationists Don’t Know What to Do About It
From lemurs to orangutans, tarsiers to gorillas, primates are captivating and sometimes unnervingly similar to us. So it’s not surprising that this group of more than 500 species receives a...
How the Mis-Measurement of the Tasmanian Tiger Led to its Extinction
Until it was hunted to extinction, the thylacine – also known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf – was the world’s largest marsupial predator. However, our new research shows...
More People Eat Frog Legs Than You Think – and That’s a Problem
Amphibians such as frogs, toads, newts and salamanders, are the world’s most threatened group of vertebrates. Of the 6,800 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,...
Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Struck at Worst Possible Angle
Few geological events fascinate as much as the one that happened 66 million years ago. Evidence suggests a huge asteroid hit our planet, triggering a chain of events that led to...
3D Simulations Reveal Asteroid Impact That Killed off Dinosaurs
Some 66 million years ago, a mammoth asteroid the size of a city smashed into Earth with the power of 10 billion Hiroshima atomic bombs on the eastern coast of...
Will the Human Race Go Extinct? Science Tells us Yes.
Will our species go extinct? The short answer is yes. The fossil record shows everything goes extinct, eventually. Almost all species that ever lived, over 99.9%, are extinct. Some left...
How Amazing Pictures Like Thus Have Shaped Our Views of Human Existence
It is 1950 and a group of scientists are walking to lunch against the majestic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. They are about to have a conversation that will become...
See This Animal? It Helped Create Humanity As We Know It Today
Why did we take so long to invent civilisation? Modern Homo sapiens first evolved roughly 250,000 to 350,000 years ago. But initial steps towards civilisation – harvesting, then domestication of...
New Research Might Explain How the Dinosaurs Were Born
The end-Permian mass extinction is considered to be the most devastating biotic event in the history of life on Earth – it caused dramatic losses in global biodiversity, both in...
Brutal Bushfires Affected 80 Percent of Australians, New Survey Shows
Last month, the Australian National University contracted with the Social Research Centre (SRC) to survey more than 3,000 Australian adults about their experiences and attitudes related to the bushfires. The...
This Climate Change Tale Comes With a Sting
There are those who say the climate has always changed, and that carbon dioxide levels have always fluctuated. That’s true. But it’s also true that since the industrial revolution, CO₂...