Biological extinction is the irreversible process by which a species, subspecies, or other taxonomic unit ceases to exist, characterized by the disappearance of all viable individuals and the loss of reproductive capacity across its entire geographic range. It results from deterministic factors such as habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive species, and climate change, often interacting with stochastic processes including demographic, environmental, and genetic drift. Extinction operates as a key macroevolutionary filter shaping biodiversity patterns, turnover rates, and phylogenetic structure, and is quantified through extinction rates, selectivity analyses, and models of population viability and metapopulation dynamics across ecological and evolutionary timescales.
There is a limit on how many times a mammal can be cloned before suffering "mutational meltdown," Japanese scientists have discovered, after making 1,200 clones over two decades that started off with a single mouse.
Plants & Animals
Mar 24, 2026
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Imagine an asteroid striking Earth and wiping out most of the human population. Even if some lucky people survived the impact, Homo sapiens might still face extinction, because the social networks humans rely on would collapse.
Plants & Animals
Feb 5, 2026
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Almost a hundred new animal species that survived a mass extinction event half a billion years ago have been discovered in a small quarry in China, scientists revealed Wednesday.
Paleontology & Fossils
Jan 28, 2026
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103
Millions of years of isolation have shaped Australia's extraordinary mammal fauna into species unlike anywhere else in the world, from platypus to koalas and wombats. Tragically, Australia is the world leader in mammal extinctions.
Plants & Animals
Jan 25, 2026
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1135
Some 445 million years ago, life on Earth was forever changed. During the geological blink of an eye, glaciers formed over the supercontinent Gondwana, drying out many of the vast, shallow seas like a sponge and giving an ...
Evolution
Jan 9, 2026
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443
The millions of species humans share the world with are valuable in their own right. When one species is lost, it has a ripple effect throughout the ecosystems it existed within.
Ecology
Dec 29, 2025
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22
Whether a species has just freshly emerged, or it has been around for millions of years does not dictate its vulnerability. This has been the assumption of an old debate on whether species' age plays a role in extinction ...
Evolution
Dec 17, 2025
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Two new studies show how climate influences behavior, communication, and genome evolution—driving adaptation in a long-running conflict.
Evolution
Dec 15, 2025
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41
Anyone walking through the Tarumã neighborhood in Curitiba (the capital of the state of Paraná, Brazil) today may find it difficult to imagine the area as it was in the past. Between the buildings, racetrack, and the city's ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 20, 2025
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77
Earth's largest mass extinction occurred about 252 million years ago, wiping out the majority of marine and terrestrial life, disrupting the global carbon cycle for several hundred thousand years, and earning the title "the ...
Ecology
Nov 13, 2025
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