All articles tagged with #extinction impact
Fossilized teeth of giant ground sloths reveal their diverse diets and ecological roles in the Pleistocene, highlighting how their extinction led to significant ecological changes and loss of ecosystem engineering functions, with modern sloths only hinting at their ancient environmental influence.
The Late Ordovician mass extinction, occurring around 445 million years ago, was a significant event that wiped out 85% of species, driven by climate cooling and other factors, yet it remains less known because it primarily affected marine life without drastically altering terrestrial ecosystems or key functional groups, making its long-term ecological impact relatively minor compared to other extinctions.