All articles tagged with #extinction
New England residents report a surge in bobcat sightings—especially in Rhode Island (about 1,500 reports in the past year)—reviving discussion of the catamount, the mountain lion long considered extinct in the region, even as officials note the eastern puma was delisted from the endangered list in 2018.
A 2025 Science study of the Naashoibito Member in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin dates fossils to roughly the final 380,000 years before the mass extinction, revealing a diverse, thriving dinosaur ecosystem that included Tyrannosaurus, Torosaurus and Alamosaurus—challenging the long-held view of a global dinosaur decline. The site shows two distinct regional communities, but experts caution this is one location and not a worldwide census, so more dated sites are needed to confirm whether the end of the dinosaurs was the result of an external catastrophe or a broader decline.
The article asks if humanity could detect an extinction-level asteroid before impact, using the dinosaurs’ 10 km carbonaceous impactor as a case study. It explains that warning time depends on the object’s origin, speed (~21 km/s), and whether it brightens from outgassing; best-case scenarios could offer weeks to a month of naked-eye visibility if the body comes from the night side and becomes bright, but more typical cases might yield only days or hours, or no warning at all if it’s sun-ward or depleted of volatiles. It also highlights how albedo and orbital geometry affect detectability, and stresses the need for planetary defense to gain decades of lead time for meaningful intervention.
A new preprint by Daniele Fargion proposes that flybys of planetary-mass objects in the outer Solar System could generate strong tides, volcanism, and climate upheavals on Earth, contributing to past mass extinctions beyond the Chicxulub event. The idea emphasizes tidal effects from near-passages (not direct collisions) and links several geological anomalies to such events; the hypothesis is controversial and based on correlations in the geological record. The paper, presented in 2025 and available on arXiv, underscores the possibility that distant, massive objects occasionally influence Earth’s history.
A team sequenced 27 Neanderthals from 10 sites across Belgium and France, showing late Neanderthals in northwestern Europe lived in large, interconnected populations rather than isolated groups, which challenges the idea that extinction was driven solely by genetic decline. The Belgian Goyet site reveals cannibalism but within the same genetic group, and the study finds no evidence of recent Neanderthal ancestry in humans, even as modern humans carry Neanderthal DNA. The researchers also advance methods to recover data from degraded remains, enabling population-level reconstructions and richer insights into Neanderthal life and interactions.
About 66 million years ago, a 10–15 km asteroid hit the Yucatán, creating the Chicxulub crater (~180 km across) and releasing energy equivalent to about 5 billion Hiroshima bombs. The impact ejected vast material, lofting dust, soot, and aerosols that blocked sunlight and likely caused a prolonged “impact winter,” leading to the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and roughly 75% of species. Survival was uneven: around 12% of land species persisted, while freshwater life fared better (~90%). The crater’s link to the extinction was established in the 1990s, with 2016 drilling confirming deep-Earth material in the peak ring; scientists continue debating the exact roles of soot versus sulfur and how long the dark interval lasted.
A Johns Hopkins study analyzed ancient fungal spores in sediments and found three pre-impact fungal blooms dating up to 30,000 years before the asteroid, likely tied to Deccan Traps volcanism that cooled the climate and stressed ecosystems; a second fungal surge occurred at the asteroid boundary, and recovery after the mass extinction was slow and uneven, suggesting the crisis began before the impact.
UW researchers describe Cimolodon desosai, a hamster-sized Late Cretaceous mammal from Baja California, as a new species of multituberculate. Its small size, omnivorous diet and arboreal habits likely helped its lineage survive the dinosaur extinction about 66 million years ago, contributing to later mammal diversity. The fossil includes a skull, jaws and limb bones and was analyzed with micro-CT imaging to confirm its distinct status, with the name honoring field assistant Michael de Sosa VI.
In 1938 a self-taught East London museum curator found a coelacanth, long believed extinct, prompting J.L.B. Smith to spend 14 years proving its survival; the living fish, a Lazarus taxon, challenged assumptions about extinction and revealed a lineage spanning hundreds of millions of years, with subsequent finds expanding its known range and confirming its rarity and vulnerability into modern times.
Oxford and Harvard researchers find tardigrades—the water bears—are the most likely animals to outlive Earth’s final catastrophe, thanks to cryptobiosis and refuges in deep oceans; true planetary sterilization would require boiling the oceans, a feat only achievable by an extraordinarily massive asteroid or rare stellar explosions, while microbes would likely survive and ecological collapse could still wipe out all life even if some tardigrades endure.
If the Sun vanished, light would reach Earth for about eight more minutes, after which a rapid blackout would plunge the planet into darkness and an abrupt drop in temperature. Photosynthesis would cease, jeopardizing most surface life and food crops, while artificial light and underground refuges might sustain a fraction of humanity. The Moon would go dark, orbits could destabilize, and only hardy organisms like tardigrades and some chemosynthetic microbes might survive long term. Oceans could persist for years in the deepest regions, but the climate would continue to cool toward near‑absolute zero. In the far future the Sun itself will die and our oceans may vaporize as it expands, but the immediate catastrophe would be a swift descent into a dark, icy world.
A Harvard–Oxford study models what energy would be needed to sterilize Earth and identifies tardigrades as the ultimate survivors, capable of cryptobiosis and thriving in deep-ocean refuges; while surface catastrophes like asteroid impacts or nearby supernovae could devastate ecosystems, boiling the oceans would be the threshold to erase resilient life, suggesting life could endure long after humans are gone.
Earth after humans is explored as a thought experiment: Oxford biologist Tim Coulson suggests that while extinction is inevitable for all species, humans leaving the scene could let other life forms fill ecological roles, with octopuses highlighted as potential civilization-building successors due to their problem-solving abilities and decentralized nervous system—though they’d still face challenges adapting to land; evolution remains unpredictable and intelligence could emerge in surprising ways.
In a Chinese quarry, researchers uncovered the Huayuan biota dating to about 513 million years ago—over 50,000 fossils across 153 species, 91 of which are new—preserving soft tissues like guts, nerves, and eyes. This Konservat Lagerstätte shows a rapid ecological rebound within roughly 1.5 million years after the first mass extinction, with deep-water refuges and larval dispersal linking Cambrian communities across oceans to later deposits such as the Burgess Shale.
In Brazil’s Amazon, the Akuntsu—once about 20 people and now reduced to three isolated women—welcome a baby boy born to a Kanoe partner, a development that offers hope for the tribe’s survival. Officials secured protection for their Rio Omere land, fostered cross-group ties, and a translator aided communication, signaling a possible return of male roles and continuity for the Akuntsu’s future.