Two hundred and fifty-two million years ago, a series of Siberian volcanoes erupted and sent the Earth into the greatest mass extinction of all time. Billions of tons of carbon were propelled into the ...

Before dinosaurs walked the Earth and tens of millions of years before the first mammals appeared, distant mammal relatives with long, serrated canine teeth were the dominant carnivores on land.

Julien Benoit receives funding from the Palaeontological Scientific Trust (PAST) and its scatterlings projects; the NRF; and the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences (CoE in Palaeosciences).

Therapsids, the ancient relatives of mammals, once roamed Earth in great numbers during the middle to late Permian period. These land-dwelling creatures would later evolve into mammals, but their ...

The first true mammals evolved roughly 200 million years ago, during the early days of the dinosaurs. But mammals are the last surviving members of an older group, called the therapsids. At first ...

Scientists have developed a number of theories on the therapsids' success, including their fondness for underground living, their willingness to travel, and sheer dumb luck. The latest report proposes ...

The ancient closest relatives of mammals – the cynodont therapsids - not only survived the greatest mass extinction of all time, 252 million years ago, but thrived in the aftermath, according to new ...

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Palaeontologists now demonstrate that ancient mammal relatives, known as therapsids, adapted to drastic climate change by having shorter life expectancies. Two hundred and fifty-two million years ago, ...