Latest Impact events Stories

U.S. scientists say the Earth is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals, with nearly 50 percent of all species disappearing. Biologists at the University of California-Santa Barbara say they are working to determine which species must be saved. "The current extinction event is due to human activity, paving the planet, creating pollution, many of the things that we are doing today," said study co-author Assistant Professor Bradley Cardinale. "The Earth might well lose...

Evidence suggests that 'sick Earth' extinctions more likelyIn geology as in cancer research, the silver bullet theory always gets the headlines and nearly always turns out to be wrong.For geologists who study mass extinctions, the silver bullet is a giant asteroid plunging to earth.But an asteroid is the prime suspect only in the most recent of five mass extinctions, said USC earth scientist David Bottjer. The cataclysm 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs."The other four have...

By Robert S. Boyd / McClatchy Newspapers It was the greatest mass murder of all time - poison everywhere, billions slain - but the killers have never been positively identified. An estimated 95 percent of marine species and 85 percent of land creatures died, said Peter Ward, a paleobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Scientists call it "The Great Dying." Life took millions of years to recover. Scientific sleuths now think they're making progress toward learning...

The Tunguska catastrophe in 1908 evidently led to high levels of acid rain. This is the conclusion reached by Russian, Italian and German researchers based on the results of analyses of peat profiles taken from the disaster region. In peat samples corresponded to 1908 permafrost boundary they found significantly higher levels of the heavy nitrogen and carbon isotopes 15N and 13C. The highest accumulation levels were measured in the areas at the epicenter of the explosion and along the...

Geological evidence found in Ohio and Indiana in recent weeks is strengthening the case to attribute what happened 12,900 years ago in North America -- when the end of the last Ice Age unexpectedly turned into a phase of extinction for animals and humans "“ to a cataclysmic comet or asteroid explosion over top of Canada. A comet/asteroid theory advanced by Arizona-based geophysicist Allen West in the past two years says that an object from space exploded just above the earth's surface at...

The year is 1908, and it's just after seven in the morning. A man is sitting on the front porch of a trading post at Vanavara in Siberia. Little does he know, in a few moments, he will be hurled from his chair and the heat will be so intense he will feel as though his shirt is on fire.That's how the Tunguska event felt 40 miles from ground zero.Today, June 30, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of that ferocious impact near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in remote Siberia--and after 100 years,...

Researchers in Brazil reported their discovery of a new marine crocodile species on Wednesday, showing that the reptiles survived the mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.In the report published in the Proceedings of Royal Society B research journal, paleontologists said they found the new dyrosaurid crocdylomorph in the Poty Quarry, a limestone quarry located close to Recife in northeastern Brazil. Researchers suggested that the Guarinisuchus munizi survived the...

AUSTIN, Texas -- The most detailed three-dimensional seismic images yet of the Chicxulub crater, a mostly submerged and buried impact crater on the Mexico coast, may modify a theory explaining the extinction of 70 percent of life on Earth 65 million years ago.The Chicxulub crater was formed when an asteroid struck on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. Most scientists agree the impact played a major role in the "KT Extinction Event" that caused the extinction of most life on Earth, including...

The full recovery of ecological systems, following the most devastating extinction event of all time, took at least 30 million years, according to new research from the University of Bristol. About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, a major extinction event killed over 90 per cent of life on earth, including insects, plants, marine animals, amphibians, and reptiles. Ecosystems were destroyed worldwide, communities were restructured and organisms were left struggling to recover....

The full recovery of ecological systems, following the most devastating extinction event of all time, took at least 30 million years, according to new research from the University of Bristol. About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, a major extinction event killed over 90 per cent of life on earth, including insects, plants, marine animals, amphibians, and reptiles. Ecosystems were destroyed worldwide, communities were restructured and organisms were left struggling to recover....