Now for the crazy part—and the part that should shed some light on how bad the Big Five mass extinctions actually were. Despite this record of devastation, and despite the casual gloom of the many science journalists and conservation nonprofits peddling the reality of a current sixth mass extinction on par with the first five, humanity has not yet come anywhere even remotely close to death tolls of the major mass extinctions of the past half-billion years . . . yet.
