A slowdown, not salvation: what new extinction data reveal about the state of life on Earth

A slowdown, not salvation: what new extinction data reveal about the state of life on Earth

For decades, biologists have warned that humanity is precipitating a sixth mass extinction. By some estimates, species are vanishing at up to a thousand times the natural background rate. Yet a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests the picture is more complicated. Extinctions, it finds, may have peaked a century ago—and declined since. Kristen Saban and John Wiens of the University of Arizona examined 912 documented extinction…