The worst time to be alive in Earth’s history is unarguably the end-Permian, about 250 million years ago. It is the period when the greatest-ever extinction event recorded took place, killing 97% of all…
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Articles on Extinction
Displaying 261 - 280 of 326 articles
The future of Cape York Peninsula – home to many of Australia’s unique birds, mammals, frogs and reptiles – is currently under review. Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently launched the first stage of a…
For many in the West, it might seem a marvel that slug-like sea cucumbers could be at risk of extinction from their popularity on dining tables. But to Asian consumers, this news should be no great surprise…
Extreme fires that surged through South Australia and Victoria last month killed entire populations of threatened native…
The impact of European settlement on Australia was so massive that many mammals disappeared before anyone noticed they were there, but fossils from the past 10,000 years offer excellent evidence of pre-European…
Many international wildlife programs may be monitoring endangered species to extinction, often without taking necessary action…
A South American frog named after Charles Darwin may be extinct from a deadly amphibian disease. Scientists at the Zoological…
Kakadu National Park, Western Australia’s Shark Bay and Queensland’s wet tropics are among the world’s most important protected areas for conserving species, according to a study published today in the…
Bees went though a mass extinction, along with the dinosaurs and species of flowering plants, 65 million years ago. It’s…
Despite once being described as common, mammals have been lost across the Australian landscape over the last 200 years. The impact has been particularly severe on Australia’s digging mammals, including…
A method to identify new homes for animals affected by climate change has been devised by a team of UK scientists. The Zoological…
If Earth were like a human body, large animals might be its arteries, moving nutrients from where they’re abundant to where they’re needed. Currently the planet has large regions where life is limited…
In work we published in Science today we look at two conflicting ideas on whether species can adapt to climate change. Are our ideas about extinction too catastrophic, or do we actually need to do more…
It is unlikely that a mammoth could be cloned in the way we created Dolly the sheep, as has been proposed following the discovery of mammoth bones in northern Siberia. However, the idea prompts us to consider…
The world’s most endangered cat, the Iberian lynx, is headed for extinction within the next 50 years. The international study…
Today we worry that cow farts are destroying the environment with methane; back in the Proterozoic, it’s certain that algae farts ruined it with oxygen. As an evolutionary biologist and conservationist…
Contrary to previous research, climate change has been found not guilty of causing the mass extinction of giant Australian…
The rate of extinction of species today is many thousand times the natural rate. There are even examples that such loss can have serious impact on humans. So a critical question is: what is the role species…
The State of Nature report published this month showed that of more than 3,100 British species surveyed, 60% are in decline, and one in 10 of those species on the Red List are under threat of extinction…
There can be few words as poignant as “endling”, the name given to the last surviving individual of a species. The picture (below) of Benjamin, the last Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, is heartbreaking…
Top contributors
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Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University
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Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University
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Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
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Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University
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Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Australian National University
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Associate Professor, Vertebrate Palaeontology Group, Flinders University
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Lecturer in the School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University
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Professor of Environmental Management, The University of Queensland
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Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University
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Professor in Conservation Science, School of Ecosystem and Forest Science, The University of Melbourne
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Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences at the University of Bath, University of Bath
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Honorary Research Fellow, University of Sydney
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PhD candidate, Charles Darwin University
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Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate, James Cook University
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Associate professor, University of Canberra
