A day on Earth was just 23.5 hours long, 70 million years ago. Researchers discovered this by studying the growth rings of ancient mollusk fossils. The findings could tell us more about or planet ...

New research on ancient rocks from South Africa and Brazil suggests that Earth's magnetic field underwent a major weakening about 591 million years ago. This corresponds to a time period called ...

Earth’s magnetic field sustains life on our planet, protecting us from solar winds, radiation and extreme changes in temperature. But around 591 million years ago, it almost collapsed.

Our solar system’s path through the Milky Way may have stirred Earth’s ancient climate ... James Webb spots a dead galaxy just 700 million years post Big Bang 'Jupiter’s defence fails ...

No, the whole earth — including the oceans — froze ... bottoms of long-vanished oceans between 550 million and 750 million years ago. Layers of jumbled rocks (presumably brought there by ...

Our planet’s first known mass extinction happened about 440 million years ago. Species diversity on Earth had been increasing over a period of roughly 30 million years, but that would come to a ...

Learn about the time period that took place 251 to 199 million years ago. 3 min read The start of the Triassic period (and the Mesozoic era) was a desolate time in Earth's history. Something—a ...

About 800 million years ago, oxygen levels reached about 21 percent and began to breathe life into more complex organisms. The oxygen-rich ozone layer was also established, shielding the Earth's ...

A crater at the edge of the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico was created by a massive asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago At the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago, an ...

Plutonium discovered at the bottom of the ocean was found to be refuse from a kilonova that exploded close to Earth 10 million years ago. Kilonovas occur when binary neutron stars spiral closer ...

But a recent study suggests that the timeline actually stretches further back — beyond the evolution of early humans and past the age of dinosaurs — to 200 to 300 million years ago when a hot ...