A new report predicts urban air pollution will become the No. 1 cause of premature death in the coming decades, beating out poor sanitation and dirty drinking water to take more than 3.5 million lives per year.
As much as one-third of all flowering plants face extinction at the hands of humans, according to new research—and that’s not even factoring in climate change. Such a die-off would have a devastating impact on the food chain. As one of the researchers put it, “if you get rid of [plants] you get rid of a lot of the things above them.”
A revelatory new book by Scott D. Sampson, one of our leading dinosaur paleontologists, suggests we have much to learn about extinction, global warming and energy flow from the biological experience of the charismatic beasts that roamed the Earth more than 60 million years ago.