It took the Earth 10 million years to recover from a cataclysmic event that wiped out 90% of plant and animal life some 250 million years ago, according to new evidence presented Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

A mysterious cycle of booms and busts in marine biodiversity over the past 500 million years could be tied to a periodic uplifting of the world's continents.

Following one of Earth's five greatest mass extinctions, tiny marine organisms called graptoloids did not begin to rapidly develop new physical traits until about 2 million years after competing species became extinct.

Scientists have uncovered a lot about the Earth’s greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago when rapid climate change wiped out nearly all marine species and a majority of those on land.

Much of our knowledge about past life has come from the fossil record – but how accurately does that reflect the true history and drivers of biodiversity on Earth?