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extinction
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extinction Illustrations of four extinct species: a dodo, a Tasmanian wolf or thylacine, a passenger pigeon, and a mamo, with the birds shown larger for detail. Scientific names are included.
What are the Different Types of Extinction?
Know about Earth's mass extinctions
Illustration of the extinct Jamaican flightless ibis, Xenicibis xympithecus, showing a pale bird with long legs, a curved bill, and one wing raised as if in motion. This infographic presents a timeline of the five major mass extinction events in Earth's history-Devonian, Ordovician-Silurian, Permian, End-Triassic, and Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T or K-Pg)-with descriptions of each event's timing, causes, and impact on marine animal families, illustrated by a graph showing the diversity and decline of marine animal families over geologic time. “Losing the Vaquita in the Northern Gulf of California: What Would It Mean?” “The Incredible Shrinking World of the Polar Bear” “Bluefin Tunas and the Problem of Overfishing” “The Precarious State of the Monarch Butterfly”
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extinction (of species) summary
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greylag. Flock of Greylag geese during their winter migration at Bosque del Apache National Refugee, New Mexico. greylag goose (Anser anser)
Biology Bonanza
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extinction
extinction The golden toad (Incilius periglenes, formerly Bufo periglenes) is believed to be extinct. It was last sighted in 1989.

extinction

biology
Written by
John L. Gittleman
Dean of the graduate faculty at the University of Georgia's Odum School of Ecology. Editor of Carnivore Behavior, Ecology, and Evolution; co-editor of Carnivore Conservation.
John L. Gittleman
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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•History

extinction, in biology, the dying out or extermination of a species. Extinction occurs when species are diminished because of environmental forces (habitat fragmentation, global change, natural disaster, overexploitation of species for human use) or because of evolutionary changes in their members (genetic inbreeding, poor reproduction, decline in population numbers). (Read E.O. Wilson’s Britannica essay on mass extinction.) Rates of extinction vary widely. For example, during the last 100,000 years of the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2.6...

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