De-extinction — a viable conservation solution or an expensive intellectual experiment?

So, some species are going extinct. Some are coming back from the edge (I’m looking at you, Giant Panda). So what’s the big deal?

Under normal conditions, between one and five species dwindle to extinction every year. Recently, however, a study showed that pace to be accelerating, with several lost every day. As many as one million plant and animal species are in danger of extinction right now, and by the year 2100, half of all Earth’s species could be gone. The alarming rate at which we are losing biodiversity is why scientists are describing this as the sixth major extinction event.

To recap on previous extinctions, the Ordovician-silurian Extinction was 440 million years ago, the Devonian Extinction 365 million years ago, the Permian-triassic Extinction 250 million years ago, the Triassic-jurassic Extinction 210 million years ago, and most recently we had the Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction 65 million years ago — which is when the dinosaurs died out.

Fossil records reveal the causes and effects of previous mass extinctions, with causes attributed to extreme changes in temperature and sea levels, or one-off events like volcanic eruptions or an asteroid strike.