One of Earth’s earliest mass extinctions wiped out most ocean life during a sudden global ice age. From the ruins, jawed vertebrates survived, diversified, and transformed the course of evolution.

About 445 million years ago, Earth’s oceans turned into a danger zone. Glaciers spread across the supercontinent Gondwana, ...

A rapid climate collapse during the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction devastated ocean life and reshuffled Earth’s ecosystems.

A massive ice age wiped out ocean life 445 million years ago, reshaping ecosystems and setting the stage for jawed fish ...

The creature locals now call “Godzillus” did not roar out of a movie screen but out of Ordovician rock, lifted piece by piece ...

During these waves of mass extinction, most vertebrate survivors were confined to refugia, or isolated biodiversity hotspots ...

A devastating ice age wiped out most marine life, yet new research reveals how this ancient disaster unexpectedly paved the ...

Fossils from 465 million years ago recently discovered in Portugal have revealed the huge size reached by trilobites, the most diverse group of extinct marine arthropods. Geologists describe the ...

Earth’s first mass extinction: When anyone thinks of mass extinction on Earth, the first thing they think of is the extinction of dinosaurs about 66 million years ago, likely as an impact of comet or ...

The end-Ordovician was an enigmatic interval in the Phanerozoic, known for massive glaciation potentially at elevated CO 2 levels, biogeochemical cycle disruptions recorded as large isotope anomalies ...