This surprising hypothesis, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, stems from plate tectonic reconstructions for the Ordovician period noting the positions of 21 asteroid impact craters.

Scientists observed that all examined craters are situated within 30 degrees of the equator. This concentrated impact area, ...

During the time 485 to 443 million years ago, known as the Ordovician period, Earth was already in the throes of a serious cold snap. But the ring may have exacerbated things, plunging the planet ...

Back when the Earth was crawling with trilobites and other strange shelled creatures, our planet may have had a ring just like Saturn's. This ancient ring system is thought to have formed about ...

Scientists use the evidence recorded within rocks throughout geologic time to reconstruct a picture of earth's history. Amateurs, too, can look at local rocks to learn about what life was like in the ...

Researchers have proposed that Earth may have had a ring system 466 million years ago, during a period of intense meteorite bombardment known as the Ordovician impact spike. This finding ...

A recent study claims that Earth may have once had a ring system. This theory sheds light on the presence of an unusual density of impact craters around the equator dating back to the ...

A creature that scuttled along the seafloor 450 million years ago has been preserved in a rare and striking fossil that ...

A team of researchers led by Associate Professor Luke Parry, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, have unveiled a spectacular new 450-million-year-old fossil arthropod (the group that ...

Emma Bernard, a curator of fossil fish at the Museum, says, 'Shark-like scales from the Late Ordovician have been found ... end of the Devonian killed off at least 75% of all species on Earth, ...

The fossils that these layers contain are world-famous for the details that they record about life on Earth during the Late Ordovician Period. Besides preserving pieces of Earth's history, limestone ...

A new study suggests that Earth might have had a ring system around 466 million years ago, potentially formed during a period of unusually intense meteorite impacts known as the Ordovician impact spik ...