Draft:Outline of extinction

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to extinction:

Extinction is the termination of a taxon by the death of its last member. A taxon may become functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to reproduce and recover. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence.

More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryotes globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, mammoths, ground sloths, thylacines, trilobites, golden toads, and passenger pigeons.

What type of thing is extinction?

Extinction can be described as all of the following:

Types of extinction

• Coextinction
• Conservation-induced extinction
• Extinction debt
• Ecological extinction
• Evolutionary suicide
• Functional extinction
• Local extinction

• Mass extinction
• Pseudoextinction
• Extinct in the wild

Potential causes of extinction

• Artificial intelligence
• Asteroid impact
• Biological warfare
• Climate change
  • Extinction risk from climate change
• Deforestation
• Disease
• Ecological collapse
• Extinction event
• Genetic engineering
• Genetic erosion
• Habitat destruction
• Human overpopulation
• Interspecific competition
• Invasive species
• Nanotechnology
• Nuclear warfare
• Ocean acidification
• Overfishing
• Overhunting
• Pollution
• Resource depletion
• Superflare
• Volcanic eruption

History of extinction

History of extinction

Extinct species

• Lists of extinct species

Extinct animals

Arachnids

• List of extinct arachnids

Birds

• List of extinct bird species since 1500
• List of bird extinctions by year
• List of moa species

Fishes

• List of recently extinct fishes

Mammals

• List of recently extinct mammals
• List of extinct dog breeds
• List of extinct cetaceans

Insects

• List of extinct butterflies
• List of recently extinct insects

Amphibians

• List of recently extinct amphibians

Extinct plants

List of recently extinct plants

Extinct species, by continent

• List of African animals extinct in the Holocene
  • List of Madagascar and Indian Ocean Island animals extinct in the Holocene
• List of Asian animals extinct in the Holocene
• List of European species extinct in the Holocene
• List of North American animals extinct in the Holocene
  • List of Hawaiian animals extinct in the Holocene
• List of Oceanian species extinct in the Holocene
  • List of Australia-New Guinea species extinct in the Holocene
  • List of New Zealand species extinct in the Holocene
• List of South American animals extinct in the Holocene
• Islands
  • List of Madagascar and Indian Ocean Island animals extinct in the Holocene
  • List of Antillian and Bermudan animals extinct in the Holocene

Reversing extinction

• De-extinction –
• Human-guided migration –
• Species reintroduction –
  • examples –
    • Eurasian beaver reintroduction
    • Lynx reintroduction in Great Britain
• Rewilding –
• Species translocation – human action of moving an organism from one area and releasing it in another.

Extinction in media

Art

• Extinct species in art