How to Use mass extinction in a Sentence

mass extinction

noun
  • Even the five mass extinctions on our planet couldn’t wipe them out.
    — Carlyn Kranking, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Dec. 2024
  • So far there have been five notable mass extinctions on Earth.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Apr. 2026
  • Comet, ash cloud, mass extinction, redo.
    — Literary Hub, 3 Nov. 2025
  • The end-Triassic mass extinction was not the end of all ichthyosaurs, though.
    — Jacek Krywko, Ars Technica, 18 Apr. 2024
  • There are different ways to explain this mass extinction event.
    — Martin Broen, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Oct. 2024
  • 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
  • The back-and-forth created a climatic whiplash that drove a mass extinction.
    — WIRED, 28 Sep. 2023
  • For Thorn, both factors probably played are role in this mass extinction.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 28 June 2023
  • Some researchers have even speculated that such a close pass could provoke a mass extinction event.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 26 June 2025
  • There also have been mass extinctions that wiped out nearly every living thing on its surface.
    — Scott Denning, The Conversation, 18 Apr. 2022
  • In the shadow of Earth’s fifth mass extinction, ants evolved agriculture.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Oct. 2024
  • Here are four animals that managed to persist through Earth’s mass extinction events.
    — Scott Travers, Forbes, 7 Sep. 2024
  • Plants and animals cannot keep up with this pace of warming, which means another mass extinction is inevitable.
    — Zoe Mintz, CBS News, 8 Mar. 2026
  • 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 mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs gets most of the buzz, but there was an even worse bout of mass death ages before the dinosaurs said goodbye.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 18 June 2026
  • 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
  • Following this mass extinction, the oceans were largely empty of competitors but rich in food.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 29 Sep. 2025
  • This mass extinction, known as the Sinsk event, is thought to have been caused by declining oxygen levels.
    — CBS News, 28 Jan. 2026
  • However, after the mass extinction event, archosauromorphs found a way to survive the dead zone.
    — Monica Cull, Discover Magazine, 11 June 2025
  • The bird likely lived around 80 million years ago and died out before the fifth mass extinction event that wiped out most non-avian dinosaurs.
    — Monica Cull, Discover Magazine, 26 Nov. 2024
  • News accounts of fires, floods, erupting volcanoes, plagues, the loss of arable land, and mass extinctions evoke a planet in collapse.
    — Richard Brody, New Yorker, 16 June 2025
  • Han said there is evidence of 18 or more mass extinctions over the past 540 million years.
    — Hanna Wickes, Charlotte Observer, 27 Feb. 2026
  • The new growth influenced the evolution of creatures that survived the mass extinction.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 July 2024
  • Everyone knows about the mass extinction that ended the Age of Dinosaurs.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Jan. 2025
  • Paradise is a Hulu sci-fi thriller set in an underground bunker following a mass extinction event.
    — Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 8 Dec. 2025
  • 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
  • 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
  • This boundary is famously associated with the mass extinction event that led to the demise of the dinosaurs.
    — Jonathan Granoff, Newsweek, 29 Jan. 2025
  • Add to that the existential confusion and sorrow of the climate crisis and the sixth mass extinction.
    — Alex Suskind, Pitchfork, 20 Mar. 2026
  • 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

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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