Earth's history is marked by devastating mass extinctions, each one reshaping life as we know it. Now, experts warn that ...

The Ordovician Period was around 485 to 444 million years ago and had a thriving ecosystem beneath the water, before fauna and flora on land.

Cambrian and Ordovician trilobite body size (A) and their correlation to the inferred oxygen levels (B) and temperature (C). (B) Ocean redox conditions and widespread anoxic intervals, showing ...

It lived in the immediate aftermath of the end Ordovician extinction event more than 440 million ... Keurbos susanae is a new genus and species which we are still trying to place among other early ...

The fossil Keurbos susanae, or Sue, in the rock. Credit: University of Leicester. A study from the University of Leicester describes a newly identified fossil species that is 444 million years old, ...

Discovered 25 years ago, a 444-million-year-old marine arthropod fossil stumped paleontologists, as they couldn’t identify its exact species. Sarah Gabbot, who originally discovered the specimen ...

The Ordovician extinction killed 60 percent of marine invertebrates at a time when life was largely confined to the sea, while the late Devonian wiped out around 70 percent of all species and led to ...

The fossil, now officially named Keurbos susanae, was found in South Africa’s Soom Shale, a rock layer north of Cape Town that was formed after a massive global extinction event.. During that time, a ...

A cataclysmic shift at the end of the Ordovician led to the disappearance of about 85% of species at a time when life was mostly limited to the seas. Sue the T. rex strikes a pose in its old ...

75% of all species, particularly in the types of fish found in ancient seas and lakes, while the Ordovician event wiped out about 85% of marine species. Get the Space.com Newsletter ...

Specifically, the findings support the hypothesis that supernovae could have triggered two of the so-called "big five" mass extinctions: those at the end of the Ordovician Period, some 445 million ...