Extinction events Archives

Earth ring system - Grok via Astrobiology.com

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Impact events, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Earth May Have Had A Ring System 466 Million Years Ago

by Keith CowingSeptember 19, 2024September 19, 2024

In a discovery that challenges our understanding of Earth’s ancient history, researchers have found evidence suggesting that Earth may have had a ring system, which formed around 466 million years […]

A person looks at cap carbonate rocks in South China in 2019. The new study provides a new explanation for dramatic global environmental changes that led to their formation. Credit Yarong Liu

Analog Studies, Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Cryobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Press Release

Explaining Dramatic Planetwide Changes After The Last Snowball Earth Event

by Keith CowingSeptember 19, 2024September 19, 2024

Some of the most dramatic climatic events in our planet’s history are “Snowball Earth” events that happened hundreds of millions of years ago, when almost the entire planet was encased […]

Zonally and temporally averaged snow fraction for our reference non-impacted model (top left) and at three points in time post-impact for our combined water and heat deposition impact model: 6 months post-impact (top right), 1 year post-impact (bottom left), and 15 years post-impact (bottom right), by which time the impacted models snow fraction has returned to a state clost to that found in our non-impacted reference state. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Comets and Asteroids, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Extinction events, Icy Worlds, Impact events

The Impact of Icy Cometary ‘Impacts’ on Exoplanetary Atmospheres I: Tidally-Locked Terrestrial Exoplanets

by Keith CowingSeptember 18, 2024

Impacts by rocky and icy bodies are thought to have played a key role in shaping the composition of solar system objects, including the Earth’s habitability. Hence, it is likely […]

Scientists unearth oceans and continents “tag-team” devasted life millions of years ago Credit University of Southampton

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Oceans And Continents Devastated Marine Life Millions Of Years Ago

by Keith CowingSeptember 11, 2024September 11, 2024

Scientists have revealed how a “tag-team” between the oceans and continents millions of years ago devastated marine life – and altered the course of evolution on Earth. Their study has […]

Conferences and Meetings, Courses, Extinction events, Impact events, Status Report

TIPCEEE Workshop: The Impact Of Impacts

by Keith CowingAugust 28, 2024August 28, 2024

TIPCEEE: a half-day virtual workshop from PCE3 October 3rd, 10AM Eastern Time TIPCEEE (Topics in Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments), a half-day virtual workshop to focus on frequent, heavily […]

Images of forams created by a scanning electronic microscope. Credit: Dustin Harper

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Gaia - Planetary Perspectives, Habitable Zones, Press Release

What Microscopic Fossilized Shells Tell Us About Ancient Climate Change

by Keith CowingAugust 27, 2024August 27, 2024

At the end of the Paleocene and beginning of the Eocene epochs, between 59 to 51 million years ago, Earth experienced dramatic warming periods, both gradual periods stretching millions of […]

Comparison between the performance of the orbital outcome regressor (top row) and a non-ML baseline model (bottom row) on the validation set of 103,404 three-planet systems. Predicted orbital elements (i.e., semi-major axis, eccentricity, and inclination) for the new, merged planets are plotted against their true orbital elements. The ML model predicts orbital elements with somewhat less scatter and bias about the true values than the baseline model, approaching the accuracy limits imposed by chaos (see Table 1). -- astro-ph.EP

AI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Extinction events, Habitable Zones, Impact events, Status Report

Accelerating Giant Impact Simulations With Machine Learning

by Keith CowingAugust 20, 2024August 20, 2024

Constraining planet formation models based on the observed exoplanet population requires generating large samples of synthetic planetary systems, which can be computationally prohibitive.

Phylogenetic relationships of Beorn leggi and Aerobius dactylus gen. et sp. nov. A Phylogenetic result of the total evidence approach using 36 morphological characters and 1774 bp 18S rRNA sequences. Numbers at nodes represent posterior probability supports. Fossils are highlighted in red bold texts. B Artistic reconstruction of the two fossil specimens by Franz Anthony. -- Nature

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Microbiology & Virology, Status Report

Cretaceous Amber Inclusions Illuminate The Evolutionary Origin Of Tardigrades

by Keith CowingAugust 19, 2024August 18, 2024

Tardigrades are a diverse phylum of microscopic invertebrates widely known for their extreme survival capabilities. Molecular clocks suggest that tardigrades diverged from other panarthropods before the Cambrian, but their fossil […]

Impact event that killed the dinosaurs -- NSF

Astrogeology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Extinction events, Fossils & Paleontology, Impact events, Meteorites & Asteroids, Press Release

Tracking Down The Asteroid That Sealed The Fate Of The Dinosaurs

by Keith CowingAugust 19, 2024August 17, 2024

Geoscientists from the University of Cologne have led an international study to determine the origin of the huge piece of rock that hit the Earth around 66 million years ago […]

Asteroid that created Chicxulub crater Credit: NASA

Biosignatures & Paleobiology

The Chicxulub Impactor Was A Carbonaceous-type Asteroid From Beyond Jupiter

by Keith CowingAugust 15, 2024July 28, 2026

[University of Cologne] Scientists have pinpointed the origin and composition of the asteroid that caused the mass extinction 66 million years ago, revealing it was a rare carbonaceous asteroid from […]