Holocene extinction
AROUND 8,000 BCE TO PRESENT
Pandas became the poster species for extinction back in the 1980s, when there were fewer than 1,114 individuals recorded in China
© Getty
Species made extinct
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Also known as the sixth mass extinction, for the last 10,000 years Earth has been in the midst of another extinction event, which is rapidly removing animals from our planet.
Scientists define a mass extinction as around three-quarters of all species dying out over a short geological time, which is anything less than 2.8 million years. Right now we find ourselves at the beginning of the latest mass extinction, which is moving much faster than any of the others. Since 1970, the populations of vertebrate species have declined by an average of 68 per cent, and currently over 35,000 species are considered to be threatened with extinction. During the 20th century alone, as many as 543 land vertebrates became extinct.