extinction ,in biology, the dying out or termination of a race or species. Extinction occurs when a species can no longer reproduce at replacement levels. Most extinctions are thought to have resulted from environmental changes that affected the species in either of two ways. The doomed species might not have been able to adapt to the changed environment and thus perished without descendants; or it may have adapted but, in the process, may have evolved into a distinctly new species. The effect of humans on the environment, through hunting, collecting, and habitat destruction, has become a significant factor in plant and animal extinctions.are diminished because of environmental forces (habitat fragmentation, global change, overexploitation of species for human use) or because of evolutionary changes in their members (genetic inbreeding, poor reproduction, decline in population numbers).

Rates of extinction are selective. For example, during the last 100,000 years of the Pleistocene Epoch (about 1.8 million to 11,800 years ago), some 40 percent of the existing genera of large mammals in Africa and more than 70 percent in North America, South America, and Australia were extinguished.

Mass extinction events




One such mass extinction occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period, some 66,000,000 years ago, when the dinosaurs and much of the marine life of the day perished. Evidence points to the impact of an asteroid hitting the Earth as the cause of the Cretaceous extinctions. It is suspected that catastrophic events—such as an asteroid impact—may have triggered other mass extinctions as well. In fact, mass extinctions appear to have taken place approximately every 26,000,000 years, which has led some paleontologists to propose that a cyclical cosmic event causes these periodic die-offs.

These conspicuous declines in diversity are referred to as mass extinctions; they are distinguished from the majority of extinctions that occur continually and are referred to as background extinction. Five mass extinctions can be distinguished from the fossil record:

Ordovician Period–Silurian Period extinction (about 440 million years ago), which included about 25 percent of marine families and 85 percent of marine species, with trilobites and corals suffering greatly;Late Devonian Period extinction (about 360 million years ago), which included 15–20 percent of marine families, 86 percent of marine brachiopods, and many corals, with the die-off probably a consequence of lower temperatures (most surviving families being adapted to cold water);Permian Period–Triassic Period extinction (about 250 million years ago), the most dramatic die-off, with the elimination of about half of all families, some 95 percent of marine species (nearly wiping out brachiopods and corals), and about 70 percent of land species (including plants, insects, and vertebrates) within the span of 1–2 million years;Triassic Period–Jurassic Period extinction (about 200 million years ago), possibly caused by an asteroid striking the Earth and involving about 20 percent of marine families and about half of all extant species within a span of about 10,000 years, thus opening up numerous ecological niches into which the dinosaurs evolved;Cretaceous Period–Tertiary Period extinction (65 million years ago), involving about half of all plant and animal species, including the dinosaurs, and probably caused by a large comet’s or asteroid’s striking Earth.


Human-induced extinctions


All these factors have increased the numbers of threatened species: almost one in four mammal species and one in eight bird species were considered at significant risk of extinction at the start of the 21st century.