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The Big Five Mass Extinctions in The History of Our Planet
Extinction is a natural process that happens to all species. It is driven by natural selection.
So far it is known that over the years there were five big mass extinctions throughout the existence of our planet. The oldest one was the Ordovician Extinction, 450–440 million years ago, and the latest one was the KT Extinction, 66 million years ago.
All the extinctions had devastating consequences on the living creatures of the planet from those periods. During these ones more than 75% of species disappeared. Most of the time the extinctions had something to do with rapid climate change.
The idea is that species experiment extinctions all the time. Therefore, a mass extinction happens when the rate of extinction is far greater than the usual rate.
Even so, during our lives numerous minor extinctions take place as well. The numbers differ from source to source, but nowadays it is estimated that somewhere between 10.000 and 100.000 species are becoming extinct each year. Which mean that, from 2000 until now, we have lost at least 200.000 species.
The Big Five Mass Extinctions were first mentioned by Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup in a landmark paper published in 1982. In time, other discoveries have been made and their theory is becoming more and…
