Devonian

A global extinction event around 359 million years ago may have been triggered by the death blast of a distant star, a new study suggests. Toward the end of the Devonian period (416 million to 358 million years ago), there was a mass extinction known as the Hangenberg Event; it wiped out armored fish called placoderms and killed off approximately 70% of Earth’s invertebrate species. But scientists have long puzzled over what caused the die-off. Recently, preserved plant spores offered clues about this ancient extinction. Fossil spores spanning thousands of years at the boundary of the Devonian and the Carboniferous … Read more