Directory of Extinction Resources

Home > Science > Earth Sciences > Paleontology > Extinction

Most animals and plants that ever lived died out long before the present. The fossil record reveals that there are several periods of time in the earth's past when the extinction rate was very high (e.g., at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary, and the Permian/Triassic boundary) - causing mass extinctions of a large percentage of the species. This category contains sites dealing with the subjects of extinction and mass extinctions in the fossil record.

Subcategories

• Cretaceous-Tertiary
• Permian-Triassic
• Recent

Resources in This Category

• Animal Extinctions in the Fossil Record: A Developmental Paradigm

  http://www.mprinstitute.org/vaclav/Develop.htm
  Article by Vaclav Petr discussing the possible causes of extinctions.

• Extinctions: Cycles of Life and Death Through Time

  http://park.org/Canada/Museum/extinction/homepg.html
  Covers patterns and periodicity of extinction, with discussions of major mass extinctions and minor extinction events.

• Our Nemesis?

  http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Our%20Nemesis.htm
  Article on a paper by David Raup and John Sepkoski, two respected paleontologists, making the remarkable claim that great catastrophes occur on the Earth every 26 million years,

• The Cosmic Clock, the Cycle of Terrestrial Mass Extinctions

  http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/1009.pdf
  Paper by J. A. Marusek. A dual cycle of extinction events is observed and well ordered in geological time. Two primary mechanisms, Oort cloud comet impacts and nearby supernova events are synchronized to the passage of the solar system through the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy.

• The Late Devonian Mass Extinction

  http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/impact2000/pdf/3072.pdf
  A professional technical paper discussing whether the Late Devonian (Frasnian-Famennian) mass extinction was initiated by an extraterrestrial impact or an earth-bound event.

• The Role of Extinction in Evolution

  http://www.pnas.org/content/91/15/6758.full.pdf
  Paper by David M Raup, Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago.

Related Categories

• Home > Science > Environment > Biodiversity
• Home > Science > Environment > Climate Change > Impacts and Indicators > Animals
• Home > Society > Future > Catastrophes

 

Home > Science > Earth Sciences > Paleontology > Extinction

 

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