What is the sixth mass extinction and what can we do about it? A mass extinction is a short period of geological time in which a high percentage of biodiversity, or distinct species — bacteria, fungi, plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates — dies out.

Mass extinctions are characterized by the loss of at least 75% of species within a geologically short period of time (i.e., less than 2 million years). [18][51] The Holocene extinction is also known as the "sixth extinction", as it is possibly the sixth mass extinction event, after the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, the Late Devonian ext...

Have humans pushed the Earth into its sixth mass extinction? Evidence suggests that we are well on our way to that outcome, if not in a mass extinction already. We are currently losing species hundreds or thousands of times faster than normal background extinction rates.

2023年5月2日 · Scientists agree that the Earth is currently undergoing the sixth mass extinction in its 4.6-billion-year history—and it's further along than we thought.

2022年1月13日 · Today, many experts warn that a Sixth Mass Extinction crisis is underway, this time entirely caused by human activities. A comprehensive assessment of evidence of this ongoing extinction event...

2024年4月13日 · 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...

2025年2月14日 · But in the most well-cited study on the sixth mass extinction [5], the time frame for reaching the 75% threshold for mass extinction is unclear. The only scenario yielding 75% species loss in hundreds of years only occurred if all currently threatened species went extinct in the next 100 years and then that same extinction rate continued ...

2024年11月19日 · The most recent wave of extinction has led some scientists to call our period the Anthropocene Extinction, along with the Sixth Mass Extinction. In the past, the giant Chicxulub impactor caused the end of the non-avian dinosaurs and …

2015年6月19日 · Avoiding a true sixth mass extinction will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species and to alleviate pressures on their populations—notably habitat loss, overexploitation for economic gain, and climate change (31–33).

Discover what we mean when we talk about mass extinctions through a timeline that explores the five mass extinction events in Earth’s history, and an introduction to how human activity has caused the extinction of species in our history.