A team of British scientists contends that, within 200 years, Earth's temperatures may become hot enough to kill off half of all existing plant and animal species. From: Nick Wadhams for National Geographic News. The researchers from the Universities of York and Leeds in Britain base that dire possibility on a new analysis of the 520-million-year-old fossil record, which links past mass extinctions with cycles of high temperatures. "We could be in the temperature zone in which mass extinctions have occurred by the end of this century, or more likely in the next century," said Peter Mayhew... Read more [...]