How to Use mass extinction in a Sentence

mass extinction

noun
Definition of mass extinctionnext
  • The end-Triassic mass extinction was not the end of all ichthyosaurs, though.
    — Jacek Krywko, Ars Technica, 18 Apr. 2024
  • This cooled and dried continents and led to a mass extinction event.
    — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 24 July 2023
  • The back-and-forth created a climatic whiplash that drove a mass extinction.
    — WIRED, 28 Sep. 2023
  • In an age of mass extinction, people are going to enormous lengths to put species back into place.
    — Dino Grandoni and Melina Mara, Anchorage Daily News, 11 Sep. 2023
  • Instead, titanosaurs were among the witnesses to – and victims of – the most recent mass extinction on Earth.
    — Kristi Curry Rogers, The Conversation, 7 Mar. 2024
  • Even in the midst of what scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction, caused by anthropogenic climate change, the world is teeming with life.
    — Gabe Allen, Discover Magazine, 30 Oct. 2023
  • Close to 66 million years ago, during spring in the Northern Hemisphere, a 6-mile-wide chunk of space rock slammed into our planet and set off the world’s fifth mass extinction.
    — Riley Black, Popular Science, 20 July 2023
  • For Thorn, both factors probably played are role in this mass extinction.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 28 June 2023
  • The asteroid strike famously triggered the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and about 90 percent of the Earth’s species 66 million years ago.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 24 Aug. 2023
  • The new growth influenced the evolution of creatures that survived the mass extinction.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 July 2024
  • The last mass extinction occurred some 66 million years ago, when an asteroid slammed into Earth and killed off the dinosaurs and most life on the planet.
    — Amy Woodyatt, CNN, 26 Sep. 2023
  • And Bunny is still here, focusing on signs of life in her small garden rather than mass extinction, hopeful about the future.
    — Apoorva Tadepalli, Washington Post, 1 Aug. 2023
  • Some episodes of rapid climate change during the Phanerozoic, so shows the fossil record, coincide with mass extinctions.
    — David Bressan, Forbes, 22 Sep. 2024
  • Even so, scientists think that neither acid haze and rain nor ozone damage were sufficient to cause the mass extinction.
    — Howard Lee, Ars Technica, 8 Feb. 2023
  • The rocks preserve some of the last non-avian dinosaurs before Earth’s fifth mass extinction, including icons such as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Jan. 2024
  • The end of the Cretaceous brought a mass extinction triggered by the Chicxulub asteroid.
    — Elizabeth Rayne, Ars Technica, 7 June 2024
  • There are different ways to explain this mass extinction event.
    — Martin Broen, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Oct. 2024
  • Here are four animals that managed to persist through Earth’s mass extinction events.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes, 7 Sep. 2024
  • Formed near the end of the Permian Period, prior to the world’s worst mass extinction, the expanse of olive-green rock was laid down by rivers that threaded across the prehistoric landscape.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Mar. 2023
  • Or could a few of them, somehow, have survived that mass extinction event – with their descendants living even today?
    — Hans Sues, Discover Magazine, 15 Aug. 2024
  • This prediction aligns well with Earth’s past periods of mass extinction and the volatile history of our planet.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 28 Sep. 2023
  • Having lived on Earth for at least 600 million years, water bears persisted through all five mass extinction events.
    — Christian Thorsberg, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Jan. 2024
  • Land animals had a high rate of extinction and replacement by smaller species, and there was a mass extinction of tiny shell-making creatures that lived on the sea bed.
    — Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 4 Oct. 2023
  • One is the mass extinction caused by a meteorite slamming into the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, which caused most of the dinosaurs to die out.
    — Ed Stannard, Hartford Courant, 11 Mar. 2024
  • Scientists have identified five major episodes of mass extinction in the past 550 million years.
    — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 23 Sep. 2023
  • Pterosaurs dominated the skies during the time of the dinosaurs and met the same deadly fate 66 million years ago after an asteroid strike triggered a mass extinction event.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 9 Sep. 2024
  • The museum said the finned animal appears in fossil records before the existence of trees and sharks have survived five mass extinctions.
    — Cortney Moore, Fox News, 13 Aug. 2023
  • For more than 400 million years, sharks have lived through multiple mass extinctions in habitats ranging from tropical coral reefs to the Arctic.
    — Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 Feb. 2024
  • The first chapter covers nearly 4.5 billion years, racing through the dawn of life and periodic mass extinctions.
    — Ben Ehrenreich, The New Republic, 10 May 2023
  • Violence, destruction, giant insects, and ice and fire ensue, and lead to a mass extinction.
    — Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mass extinction.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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