If we want to avoid mass extinctions and preserve the ecosystems all plants and animals depend on, governments should protect a third of the oceans and land by 2030 and half by 2050, with a focus on areas of high biodiversity. So say leading biologists in an editorial in the journal Science this week.

It's known as the "Great Dying," an extinction event even more powerful than the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It's called the Permian-Triassic extinction event, and it took place 250 million years ago, before dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Scientists previously believed the Permian-Triassic extinction event happened because of a volcanic eruption. And not just any volcanic eruption... the volcanic eruption. Called the "Siberian Flood Basalts," this million-year-long volcanic eruption potentially caused the extinction of up to 96 percent of marine life, along with 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrate species.

Most of the extinctions were caused by deforestation in South America, a new study of endangered birds shows

Scientists say they’ve used human test-tube baby techniques to try to save the nearly extinct northern white rhino. In an improbable experiment, they are trying to resurrect an entire subspecies using dead males, two infertile remaining females, and some closely related southern white rhinos. And they say they also plan to use stem-cell technology to try to create a population of pure northern white rhinos in the lab.

After a series of catastrophic wildfires in 2014, the Mallee emu wren became extinct in South Australia, but the birds are making a comeback in the state with the help of environmentalists. When the tiny bird — weighing only as much as a 10 cent piece — could no longer be found in SA, there were still numbers that existed in parts of Victoria's north-west, but they were listed as endangered.

Bright blue, older than dinosaurs and weighing as much as an average-sized man, coelacanths are the most endangered fish in South Africa and among the rarest in the world. Barely 30 of these critically-endangered fish are known to exist off the east coast of South Africa, raising concern that a new oil exploration venture in the area could jeopardise their future.

They died of thirst on a remote Alaskan island. By Bryson Masse.

The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, believed extinct, had the quick wit of a killer new research reveals. By Gemma Tarlach.

At the end of the last Ice Age, most large animals in North America were wiped out, and others transformed themselves. Yet one has survived virtually unchanged to the present day. Where cars now drive along congested roads in the heart of modern Los Angeles, sabre-toothed cats once roamed. They stalked prey that ranged from hoofed mammals to creatures resembling elephants. The ferocious cats competed with dire wolves, American lions and short-faced bears.

World population keeps increasing. Humanity spreads all over the world just like a cancer, causes other species to go extinct, and changes the face of the earth. The net population in the world continues to increase at an alarming rate.

The world is hurtling towards the first mass extinction of animal life since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, according to the most comprehensive survey of wildlife ever carried out. By 2020, the populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and other vertebrate species are on course to have fallen by more than two-thirds over a period of just 50 years, the Living Planet report found.

Stephen Hawking is one of many scientists who see the possible near-term demise of our species. Spend that 401k! By Phil Torres.

Penguin populations around the world are in decline and now New Zealand's Yellow-eyed penguins slip toward extinction. At their rate of decline, Yellow-eyed penguins will vanish from the Otago Peninsula of New Zealand in about 40 years.

Global Warming is the root cause because of which the 1st mammal species goes extinct. The Bramble Cay Melomys is the 1st mammal to go extinct.

'Extinction rates for birds, mammals and amphibians are similar to the five global mass-extinction events of the past 500 million years that probably resulted from meteorite impacts, massive volcanism and other cataclysmic forces'

When six massive endangered animals turn up dead in the span of a few weeks, conservationists do everything they can to find out why. Although they seemed otherwise healthy, the North American right whales were all recently found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. Now, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Marine Animal Response Society, the Canadian Coast Guard, and others are working together to find out why the whales died.

When plant and animal species go extinct, it's usually a clear sign that humans have messed up. We've over-hunted, destroyed habitats, polluted waterways, and altered the climate by burning fossil fuels, wiping species off the planet for good. We tend to study extinctions to understand just how much we have disrupted the planet's ecosystems. But in a new scientific study published on Monday, scientists said we're not paying nearly enough attention to the "prelude" to global extinction...

Shark fins and manta ray gills found for sale in stores and markets in Vancouver and in China just a few years ago belonged mainly to species that are now listed as at-risk and banned for trade, DNA testing shows. Researchers led by Dirk Steinke at the University of Guelph found that 71 per cent of more than 100 samples tested belonged to species that are considered at risk of extinction, including the whale shark, the largest fish in the world. It has been listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union of Conservation since 2003.

Has the chilling threat of extinction worn off at last for the long-endangered snow leopard? Not exactly - but the iconic big cats' conservation status has been improved from "endangered" to "vulnerable". The decision was announced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) - the global standard for assessing extinction risk.

According to several scientists, Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction of species including flora and fauna, mainly because of the human activity. This is a serious case or is all about propaganda released by the new world order? Which is finally the truth? We are all familiar with the theory of the extinction of the dinosaurs took place 66 million years ago. According to this theory, an asteroid crashed into Earth and led to the extinction of a vast proportion of living beings. On the contrary, few know that another 5 times in the past, life on the planet came very close to extinction.

The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists. Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.

A bird group named the Vegaviidae, which resembled modern loons and geese, is the first identified with members that lived before and after the Cretaceous extinction

The passenger pigeon numbered in the billions but went extinct very quickly because of low genetic diversity as well as being widely hunted.

Hunting animals that stand out from the crowd because of their impressive horns or lustrous manes could lead to extinction, according to a study. Research predicts that removing even 5% of high-quality males risks wiping out the entire population, for species under stress in a changing world. Animals prized by trophy hunters for their horns, antlers or tusks usually have the best genes, say UK scientists.

Some of Earth’s creatures are on the brink of extinction and might disappear in our lifetimes.

No bells tolled when the last Catarina pupfish on Earth died. Newspapers didn’t carry the story when the Christmas Island pipistrelle vanished forever. Two vertebrate species go extinct every year on average, but few people notice, perhaps because the rate seems relatively slow—not a clear and present threat to the natural systems we depend on. This view overlooks trends of extreme decline in animal populations, which tell a more dire story with cascading consequences...

Federal officials have declared the Eastern puma extinct, 80 years after the last confirmed sighting of a graceful wildcat that once roamed widely from the Upper Midwest to the Atlantic seaboard. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week it was removing the animal from the endangered species list. The move completes a process started in 2015, when the agency proposed dropping federal protections for the Eastern puma, which is also known as the cougar, mountain lion and catamount. Its territory ranged from Michigan and southern Ontario to New England, the Carolinas and Tennessee.

Volcanic activity caused by the impact of an enormous meteor may have contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Orangutan populations in Borneo are in steep decline and can not cope with with current levels of killing. Their jungle habitats are threatened by deforestation, driven by plam oil production. Orangutans are "highly likely" to become extinct if current trends continue, according to a study released Friday which found that the apes' population in Borneo had plunged by more than 100,000 in 16 years. The region's orangutans live exclusively on Sumatra and Borneo.

Around 70 percent of the world's current king penguin population could face extinction in the near future if proper steps are not taken to constrain climate change, a new study has said. In a report published in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists have warned that climate change and overfishing can cause a major reduction in the birds' population. They studied the birds' fragmented population in the Southern Ocean.

A warden watches over Najin and her daughter Patu, the last two northern white rhino females, in their enclosure at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia National Park, Kenya, March 7, 2018.

A bill that would protect sharks and expand protections to all rays within state waters is cruising through the state Legislature. Senate Bill 2079, co-introduced by Democratic Sens. Mike Gabbard of Oahu and Russell Ruderman of Puna and four co-sponsors, seeks to protect the animals for ecological purposes and their value to Native Hawaiian cultural practices and the ocean recreation industry.

The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would shift $1.3 billion a year in oil and gas royalties to state wildlife conservation measures.

The world’s greatest forests could lose more than half of their plant species by the end of the century unless nations ramp up efforts to tackle climate change, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming on biodiversity hotspots. Mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds are also likely to disappear on a catastrophic scale in the Amazon and other naturally rich ecosysterms in Africa, Asia, North America and Australia if temperatures rise by more than 1.5C, concludes the study by WWF, the University of East Anglia and the James Cook University.

Climate change will become a steadily bigger threat to biodiversity by 2050, adding to damage from pollution and forest clearance to make way for agriculture, according to more than 550 experts in a set of reports approved by 129 governments. “Biodiversity, the essential variety of life-forms on earth, continues to decline in every region of the world,” the authors wrote after talks in Colombia. “This alarming trend endangers the quality of life of people everywhere.”