New research on robots that was modeled after real-life disasters such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs has found that species evolve more quickly and efficiently when threatened by extinction.
The research out of the University of Texas at Austin found that in situations of mass extinctions promote novel features and abilities in surviving lineages.
Extinction events may actually accelerate evolution by promoting lineages that are most evolvable. It looks like even destruction can be leveraged for evolutionary creativity.