EXTINCTION OF SPECIES - NEW STUDY

Here's something you would not expect to read in an article in the proceedings of the Royal Society:

Extinction rates have increased over the last five centuries, but generally declined in the last 100 years. 

Finally, we examined extinction rates in the last approximately 100 years (1900s−2010s; figure 2b). No groups showed a significant, positive relationship between rates and decades (electronic supplementary material, table S6), as predicted if extinction rates were accelerating towards the present. Many groups showed a non-significant, negative relationship, including all species combined, animals, tetrapods, birds and mammals. These negative relationships were significant in arthropods (r² = 0.58; p = 0.0038; n = 12) and plants (r² = 0.44; p = 0.0196; n = 12). Overall, these results do not suggest that documented extinctions have been accelerating in recent decades, but instead have declined in the largest group of animals and in plants.

This does not appear to confirm that there is an extinction crisis.

 Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals | Proceedings B | The Royal Society