Scientists have long treated mass extinctions as events locked deep in the fossil record. That framing now feels less distant ...

Scientists have documented five major mass extinction events in Earth's history, during which at least three-quarters of life went extinct. But with humans clearing habitats, exterminating species and ...

A mass extinction event is already underway. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The present extinction rate of life on Earth doesn't ...

Meara covers streaming service news for CNET. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism. When she's not writing, she likes to dote over her cat, sip black coffee ...

The passenger pigeon. The Tasmanian tiger. The Baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin. These rank among the best-known recent victims of what many scientists have declared the sixth mass extinction, as human ...

Farther back in our planet’s history, volcanic eruptions, rapid climate change, and plummeting oxygen levels have caused at least four additional mass extinctions, with smaller pulses of biodiversity ...

Humans have wiped out hundreds of species — with many more on the brink or experiencing large declines in population. Some scientists have argued that we have entered a “sixth mass extinction” event ...

The Sepkoski Curve, representing marine diversity at the taxonomic level of families over the last 600 million years. The 'Big Five' mass extinctions are labeled at the troughs of the diversity curve, ...

To put it simply, mass extinction is when species vanish much faster than they are being replaced, according to The Conversation. There have been five great mass extinctions on Earth, but this sixth ...