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Extinction & Rapid Change

CONCEPTUAL
ScienceEcosystems & Habitats|Ages 12—14|ID: mt_-r3B4FQyX3

Explain how environmental change can outpace a species' ability to adapt through natural selection, leading to extinction, using historical and contemporary examples

Mastery Evidence

  • Explains why extinction occurs when environmental change is faster than the rate of adaptation
  • Gives a historical example (e.g. woolly mammoth, dodo) and a contemporary example of threatened extinction
  • Distinguishes between background extinction rates and mass extinctions
  • Explains how human activity (habitat loss, hunting, climate change) is driving current species loss

Assessment Prompt

“If [child] was asked why woolly mammoths no longer exist while other large mammals survived, could they explain what conditions led to the mammoth's extinction — and connect it to what's happening with endangered species today?”

Curriculum Standards2 alignments

MS-LS4-5Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Middle Schoolcodes only
Standard code — full text not included in this dataset.
KS3.Sci.Bio.Adaptation.2The national curriculum in England
Environmental changes and extinction

changes in the environment may leave individuals within a species, and some entire species, less well adapted to compete successfully and reproduce, which can lead to extinction

Science · KS3

Prerequisites3

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