Tag Archives: Extinction

New evidence has ended 150-year-old debate on the nature of dinosaurs’ body temperatures and how they influenced activity levels. Research by National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientists, including John Eiler of the California Institute of Technology, indicates that some dinosaurs had the capacity to elevate their body temperatures using heat sources in the environment, such as the sun. The researchers also believe ...

Many of the world’s 27 species of crocodylians will soon be either totally or locally extinct due to human population expansion and intensive land-use for agriculture depleting the water bodies, which provide succour to crocs, said a University of Queensland researcher. Emeritus Professor Gordon Grigg of UQ says the fact that these reptiles had survived millions of years was no good ...

What led to the world’s first known mass extinction 540 million years ago? Not a meteorite or volcano but the rise of early animals, said a new study emphasizing the environmental destruction by these complex early life organism. Since early life consisted of Ediacarans, the world’s first multicellular organisms, the study says it was the appearance of complex animals capable ...

Just like the debate of what came first – egg or chicken, there is an equally intense debate on who is cuter – cats or dogs? Any animal lover will struggle to answer this question because it not only runs them mad, trying to settle on one answer, but are also endless. However, at least from the evolutionary outlook, a ...

If the rate at which deforestation is happening doesn’t stop, then mankind too will become defunct, warns a new environment study on deforestation. Agriculture, commercial business, setting up of factories or towering buildings – all such activities have contributed immensely to deforestation that we humans would be the targets of destruction too in the future, says the study . A research team ...

The small songbird, yellow-breasted bunting (Emberiza aureola) has been listed in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 18 months ago but any species that is considered medically beneficial or tasty for food in China hardly lives longer. As late as the 1980s, the bunting was a frequent visitor in the skies of northern Europe and Asia but experts say ...

Sad news for animal lovers and our children as most of the animals they recognise easily and point out in their text books will not be live in a few decades from now, going by a depiction of fast erosion of vegetation in the forests. Oregon State University researchers have projected a possibility of near extinction of 74 large herbivore ...

What happens if Asteroid 1950 DA, speeding at 9 miles per second hits Earth wiping out the entire life on it? Researchers are seriously studying the possible collision, with a chance of one in 300 though the Doomsday prediction is more than 8 centuries away on March 16, 2880. The University of Tennessee scientists say the chances are bleak but ...