Saving the whales -- how scientists measure success
...hors. "In the meantime, the threat of large-mammal extinctions arouses public passions, attention and, ultimately, money. It is here, at the intersection of sentimentality and scientific controversy, that conservation biologists typically face their greatest challenge." They describe the two-fold challenge: "Fi...UI researcher validates underpinnings of scientific theory
...al major evolutionary expansions, as well as major extinctions of life such as may have happened during periodic bombardment of the Earth by comets. "The upshot is that the big picture that has emerged over the past 20-odd years is likely valid, and not skewed by taxonomic error. We put the procedures of taxic......loss. "We suggest that the lack of recent primate extinctions is fostering complacency, and that such complacency may allow taxa to become extinct that could have been saved by more rigorous and timely action," the scientists wrote in a report to be published in the October 2000 Conservation Biology. However, t...Researchers uncover secret to mass extinction events
...oss the Eocene/Oligocene boundary during which the extinctions occurred. "While scientists often develop methods of resolving Earth history at time scales of days to weeks or months, it takes the insight of researchers like Dr. Ivany to apply existing analytical techniques to questions that address global scale...December Geology and GSA Today highlights
...not only precipitated one of the five largest mass extinctions of all time, but also generated a Richter Scale 10-13 earthquake. We find evidence from deep sea drilling that much of the eastern seaboard of North America (from the Bahamas to Nova Scotia) catastrophically failed and generated vast flows of debris ...Stowaways from space provide link between impact, biggest extinction in Earth history
...tle deep beneath the Earth's crust. "These two extinctions are like bookends for the age of the dinosaurs," Poreda says. "The P/T boundary helped to usher in the age of the dinosaurs, and the K/T boundary snuffed it out. "There has been lots of flood basalt volcanism over time, and many impacts, but thes...Social scientists and biologists collaborate to address human dimensions of biodiversity
...oss of biological diversity, with rates of species extinctions now 100 to 1000 times the background rate in the a...decade. Scientists are increasingly concerned such extinctions threaten the ability of ecosystems to continue to provide the goods and services on which human soci...Extinction claims a furry friend
Extinction is forever, but local extinctions offer a second chance,since a species that vanishes from one area may persist in another. Still, they sound a pretty clear warning of environmental distress. In the Adelaide Hills, close to South Australia's capital, researchers have noted a catastr......ere species are most at risk. To avert widespread extinctions and feed the world, we must integrate biodiversity preservation into all landscapesfrom grazing lands to coffee plantations to rice paddies. Our research shows that ecoagriculture is being successfully used on six continents around the globe." ...New technique illuminates events obscured in the geologic record
...od that may have played a significant role in mass extinctions at the end of that geologic era, Zinsmeister says. The data coincide with findings from deep-sea core drillings that show short-lived fluctuations in the climate at that time. Details of the new technique and findings were published in the March is...Collapse of simple life forms linked to mass extinction 200 million years ago
...s of the event is similar to two better-known mass extinctions one 250 million years ago at the end of the Permi...one research on the last three of the Earth's mass extinctions (scientists know of five) and has found that each happened quite quickly. Bolstered by a recent astr...International scientists probe unsolved puzzles of the Earth and beyond at "Earth System Processes"
...re six possible causes of the greatest of all mass extinctions in Earth's history. At the Permian-Triassic bounda...teor That Aided Dinosaurs." Among the five largest extinctions documented in the fossil record, only the end-Triassic (200 million years ago) has not been previous...Marine snail study suggests conservation efforts should move beyond genetic diversity
...e ages, the cooling of the planet caused localized extinctions of many populations of marine and terrestrial organisms near the northern limits of their ranges. When the earth warmed, some of the southern populations re-colonized the previously occupied northern regions. This is what the scientists believe happe...Study of marine snail suggests conservation efforts should consider factors beyond genetic diversity
...e ages, the cooling of the planet caused localized extinctions of many populations of marine and terrestrial organisms near the northern limits of their ranges. When the earth warmed, some of the southern populations re-colonized the previously occupied northern regions. This is what the scientists believe happe...July media highlights: GEOLOGY and GSA TODAY
...ssed in the temples. Accelerated Pleistocene coral extinctions in the Caribbean Basin shown by uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating. Stephen R. Getty, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA; et al. Pages 639-642These authors applied new and sophisticated dating mechanisms for corals in the Caribbean. What they le...Mass extinction at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary
...dary extinction event is one of the 'big five'mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic Eon, profoundly affecting life ...explanations fail to explain the suddenness of the extinctions in the marine realm. Then there's; asteroid impacthowever, no impact structure can be tied directly ...August media highlights GEOLOGY and GSA TODAY
...by favoring algal growth during cool periods. Mass extinctions exerted an important control on global reef distribution because they had the potential to contract the tropical reef zone for an extended period of time. This is remarkable because most mass extinction events are now seen to have occurred independen......uly 27 edition of Science describes the ecological extinctions of marine megafaunavast populations of whales, man.... "Comparing the magnitude of the mass ecological extinctions in the ocean to those on land may not be enough," states study co-author Dr. Roger Bradbury of the A...Blame North America megafauna extinction on climate change, not human ancestors
...e and becoming locally extinct. And there were the extinctions of some 35 genera of large North American mammals,...ents haven't changed since. It claims large mammal extinctions occurred 11,000 years ago; Clovis people were the first to enter North America, about 11,000 years a...University of Cincinnati geologist finds survival benefit to evolving after mass extinctions
...e found that genera first appearing following mass extinctions survived for longer periods of time, on average, t...se that organisms originating in the wakes of mass extinctions were generalists with respect to their geographic and environmental distributions," said Miller. "My...