There have been several mass extinction events on Earth.
Earth . In the history of the Earth , biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion , occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events . An extinction event ( also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis ) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth . The most recent and debatably best-known , the Cretaceous -- Paleogene extinction event , which occurred approximately million years ago ( Ma ) , was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time .