- the act of making extinct or the state of being extinct
- the act of extinguishing or the state of being extinguished
- complete destruction; annihilation
In the abstract, merely a word that describes the process or the state of complete eradication of some class of things or processes. In biology, those things which can suffer from extinction are living organisms: that is, plants and animals.
We are currently living through a period of one of the greatest mass extinctions in history. And the rate of extinction is the greatest in recorded history, thousands of times greater than at any time since the mass extinction event that triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The title to this September 17th Reuters article, World examines "impossible" goal to halt extinctions is as ominous as it is blunt:
continued at Daily Kos....
