extinct adj
1. no longer in existence; lost or especially having died out leaving no living representatives; "an extinct species of fish"; "an extinct royal family"; "extinct laws and customs" [syn: nonextant] [ant: extant]
2. of e.g. volcanos; permanently inactive; "an extinct volcano" [syn: inactive] [ant: active, dormant]
3. of a fire; being out or having grown cold; "threw his extinct cigarette into the stream"; "the fire is out" [syn: out(p)]

Extinct \Ex*tinct"\, a. [L. extinctus, exstinctus, p. p. of extinguere, exstinguere. See Extinguish.]
1. Extinguished; put out; quenched; as, a fire, a light, or a lamp, is extinct; an extinct volcano. Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct. --Milton.
2. Without a survivor; without force; dead; as, a family becomes extinct; an extinct feud or law.

Extinct \Ex*tinct"\, v. t. To cause to be extinct. [Obs.] --Shak.

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In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the group (although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point). Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "re-appears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence.

Through evolution, new species arise through the process of speciation—where new varieties of organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecological niche—and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance,

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