Can We Predict the Next Mass Extinction?

“Who will be the next dinosaur?” is a memorable headline, but it is not a scientific forecast. The dinosaurs did not disappear as a single predictable species: non-avian dinosaurs were among many groups affected by the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, while birds survived. Today, scientists can assess extinction risk for particular species and identify pressures that could worsen it. They cannot reliably announce one animal that will become the next global symbol of loss.

Risk assessments are evidence-based, not prophecies

Conservation assessments combine information such as population size, range, rate of decline, habitat condition and known threats. The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List uses defined categories and criteria, including estimates of extinction probability over set periods. A category describes risk under the available evidence; it is not a countdown clock. Assessments may change when surveys improve, populations recover or threats intensify.

Data are uneven. Many species are difficult to observe, and some have never been assessed in detail. A species can be declining without the rate being well measured. Scientists therefore report uncertainty and distinguish “data deficient” from “safe.” The endangered-species collection explores how those assessments apply to individual animals.

Why biodiversity loss is happening

The global IPBES assessment identified land and sea-use change, direct exploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species as major direct drivers of biodiversity loss. Their relative importance varies by place and ecosystem. Habitat conversion can isolate populations; fishing or hunting can remove animals faster than they reproduce; warming shifts environmental conditions; pollutants and introduced predators add further pressures. Several often act together.

IPBES estimated in 2019 that around one million animal and plant species were threatened with extinction, based on the groups assessed and the evidence then available. This was a global synthesis, not a list of a million species certain to vanish by a fixed date. The figure communicates the scale of risk while carrying assumptions about how much of life has been described and assessed.

How fossil extinctions help – and where analogy stops

The fossil record reveals past extinction rates, selectivity and ecosystem recovery. At the K–Pg boundary, impact debris, shocked minerals and rapid fossil turnover link the Chicxulub impact to a specific ancient crisis. Other mass extinctions have different triggers and environmental sequences. They show that rapid global change can transform ecosystems, but they do not provide a direct template for predicting which modern species will disappear next.

Modern monitoring offers something the fossil record cannot: a chance to intervene before a population is lost. Protected habitat, sustainable harvest, pollution controls, invasive-species management and climate action can alter risk. Outcomes remain uncertain and conservation success is uneven, but extinction is not an inevitable endpoint for every threatened species.

A better question than “who is next?”

Researchers ask which populations are declining, what mechanism is driving that decline, how reliable the data are and which interventions could help. This focuses attention on evidence and decisions instead of turning a complex crisis into a contest for the most dramatic mascot. The geological history of mass extinctions can clarify scale and consequences, while modern assessments guide action in the present.

No single animal is a guaranteed “next dinosaur.” The strongest conclusion is that many species face elevated, uneven risks from human-driven pressures, and that those risks can respond to changes in policy and practice. A forecast should state its data, time horizon and uncertainty – and leave room for a different outcome.