Extinction

Latest in Extinction

The frozen carcass of a 39,000-year-old female woolly mammoth named Yuka from the Siberian permafrost is displayed for an exhibition in Yokohama, suburban Tokyo on July 12, 2013 at a press preview before the opening.

Oldest known RNA found in 40,000-year-old woolly mammoth leg

A wildfire frontline with emergency services nearby, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada.

Are we in a sixth mass extinction?

By Lauren Leffer

This photo taken on July 10, 2024 shows part of an Apatosaurus' dinosaur skeleton at the Dampierre-en-Yvelines castle in France prior to an auction.

Earth’s 5 catastrophic mass extinctions, explained

By Laura Baisas

Artistic reconstruction of the terrestrial ecological landscape before the end Permian mass extinction based on fossil palynomorphs, plants, and tetrapods recovered, as well as sedimentological data from the South Taodonggou Section

The remote locale that shielded plants during Earth’s biggest mass extinction

By Laura Baisas

a green frog with its eyes and mouth sticking out of a shallow pool of water

Earth’s ‘Great Dying’ killed 80-90% of life. How some amphibians survived.

By Laura Baisas

Ask Us Anything

Without humans, what would happen to Earth?

By Lauren Leffer

Close up of memory crystal disc encoded with human genome

In case of extinction, scientists store human genome on a ‘memory crystal’ that lasts billions of years

Anatomically accurate sculpture of a dodo

The dodo was faster and smarter than you think

a bunch of yellow bananas

Bananas are at risk of extinction, but scientists have a plan

By Laura Baisas

Illustration of woolly mammoth walking icy plain

The last woolly mammoths were impressively inbred—but that’s not what killed them

Golden Anthias (Pseudanthias squamipinnis) in the Red Sea, Egypt

Mass extinction 183 million years ago offers dire warning for modern oceans

a large bird with blue plummage and orange eyes called a cassowary

The world’s most dangerous bird is at risk of extinction

By Laura Baisas

a collection of woolly mammoth figurines on petri dishes on a blue background to represent Colossal's de-extinction project

Endangered Species

Is de-extinction only a pipette dream? This startup has a big, expensive plan to find out.

By Andrew Zaleski

A volcano spews lava and ash. In roughly 250 million years, massive tectonic activity could push together all of our current landmasses into a supercontinent like Pangea and make the climate inhospitable to humans and other mammals.

A boiling hot supercontinent could kill all mammals in 250 million years

By Laura Baisas

Four skulls of human ancestors A. africanus, A. afarensis, H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis, and one modern human skull.

An ‘ancestral bottleneck’ took out nearly 99 percent of the human population 800,000 years ago

By Laura Baisas

Small feathered dinosaurs Kongonaphon kely partying with champagne in front of an erupting volcano and fiery asteroid during the Triassic mass extinction. Illustrated in orange, purple, and yellow.

Dinosaurs survived one mass extinction, but then their luck ran out

Paleontologist with a laser scanner over plant imprints and other fossils in a seabed in British Columbia, Canada

These weird marine critters paved the way for the ‘Cambrian explosion’ of species

By Kate Baggaley

a t rex skeleton on a black isolated bakchround

The fiery end of the dinosaurs kicked off the golden age of mammals

a dinosaur footprint in rock

It was probably springtime when an asteroid did the dinosaurs in

By Kate Baggaley

Feathered Caudipteryx dinosaurs drinking from a sandy river among palm trees before the asteroid hit

June was probably a terrible month to be a dinosaur. Here’s how we know.

By Michael J. Benton / The Conversation