In 2020, Oxford-based philosopher Toby Ord published a book called The Precipice about the risk of human extinction. He put the chances of “existential catastrophe” for our species during the next ...

How did the woolly mammoth, an ambassador of the Ice Age, end up confined to modern-day Wrangel Island? And what ultimately caused their extinction? New evidence suggests it wasn’t poor genetics as ...

(CNN) — No species lasts forever — extinction is part of the evolution of life. But at least five times, a biological catastrophe has engulfed the planet, killing off the vast majority of species from ...

Ancient sea organisms survived until a sudden extinction 550 million years ago, revealing what may be the first major mass ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. There’s an important concept in evolutionary biology called ...

Great auks (Pinguinus impennis) were large flightless birds that thrived on rocky islands in the North Atlantic for thousands of years. However, humans hunted them to extinction within just a few ...