Wiktionary
n. (context biology English) A sharp decrease in the total number of species in a relatively short period of time.
Usage examples of "mass extinction".
Collisions with cosmic debris around the black holes and radiation flashes from their accretion disks have caused such periodic events of mass extinction as the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
Species that live wholly or partially in water get fossilized more often, so the best way to time the K/T mass extinction is to look at fossils of marine species.
The biggest mass extinction on all three worlds was the third—.
Only after the mysterious mass extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago were our ancestors able to emerge into the daylight in any substantial numbers.
Fact: the Wormwood will not simply cause a mass extinction event, like Chicxulub It will be much worse than that.
It thus caused the minor mass extinction at the end of the Cambrian era.
It was ironic indeed that, at a time when many of humanity's great scientific minds were studying the extinctions of antiquity, their fellow Terrans were causing a mass extinction to rival the most devastating ever produced by nature.
In both biology and history, mass extinction results -- in the one, extinction of species, in the other, extinction of cultures and ideas.
About ninety-five percent of all species were supposed to have been wiped out in a mass extinction that happened around two hundred million years ago.