There are several things that cause extinction, but ultimately it is always the same: The last individual (or small number of individuals) of a species die. That may sound like a trivial explanation for extinction but consider what happens when you work backwards from that tragic moment in time. Well, you have more individuals in a population that was once much larger but was reduced in size somehow, which then dwindled to the last few, the last one, then zero. But how did that small population go from hundreds to a few then to zero? Most likely for no particular reason other than this: The number of individuals in a population can be made to vary in roughly absolute terms, as well as relative terms. Say there is a population of a rare rabbit, Bugs bunnii living in a region the size of Yellowstone National Park. If you introduce 1,000 coyotes to this area, they will eat rabbits indiscriminately, all species, and along the way they may consume almost all of the B. bunnii leaving maybe three or four. Then, those wemaining wabbits die off because they are all males, or for some other totally dumb and tragic reason. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...