There have been five mass extinctions on the Earth in the past four billion years, and the last one 65 million years ago wiped out the dinosaurs. Biologists have long speculated that if humans become extinct, insects will become the next dominant species. Now they say we’re about to have a sixth extinction, but it won’t be the end of us?not yet, anyway. Instead, we’re about to lose many of our butterflies, birds and plants. But just as human beings evolved by learning how to survive the ice age, some insects show evidence that they can grow bigger brains when they need to.
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Almost half of all plant species are facing extinction. Earlier, the World Conservation Union thought only one in eight plant species would disappear, but now it looks like we’ll lose half of them, and some researchers think we?ll lose even more. Most of the medicines used in the West were discovered in tropical forests, which are being cut down fast, and the potential to develop new drugs may vanish along with them.
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Scientists think we may be in the middle of the sixth massextinction in the history of the Earth. A UN report warnsthat 1,183 (12%) of bird species and 1,130 (nearlyone-fourth) of all mammal species are threatened withextinction.

Mass extinctions have occurred five times so far in the fourbillion year history of life on Earth. These are moments inhistory when, for one reason or another, half or more of allspecies die off within a short period of time. We can spotthese mass extinctions from fossil records.
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