| The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002. |
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| mass extinction |
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| Any of several events in the Earth’s past in which large numbers of species (in some cases, up to eighty percent) became extinct. | 1 |
| ‡ The most famous mass extinction included the destruction of the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. (See Alvarez hypothesis.) | 2 |
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| | | The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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