According to a recent report by scientific journal Nature, Earth could soon face a mass extinction if species continue to disappear at their current rate.

 NBC News reports that a mass extinction is when 75 percent or more of the planet's species die out - an event that has happened five times in Earth's history. In this case, the amphibian population is most at risk, with 41% of species threatened with extinction. Furthermore, 26% of mammal species and 13% of bird species are also threatened.

The biggest culprit behind this is "exploitation," which includes hunting and fishing. Habitat loss and degradation is also to blame. Lastly, climate change could be a large factor - if weather extremes continue, Earth could lose 75 percent of its species by 2200.

This is not a new trend - according to The Independent, over the past 3.5 billion years more than 95 % of all species that have populated the earth have died off. Furthermore, the Red List of critically endangered species counts more than 46,000, and the number is still rising.

Nature reports that conservation efforts may help to slow down extinctions, but that current trends don't have a lot of promise. Nations are indeed setting aside larger plots of land and ocean to protect these days, but most measures of biodiversity show that pressures on different species are steadily increasing.

Derek Tittensor, a marine ecologist at a UN conservation monitoring centre in Cambridge, said in the report: "In general the state of biodiversity is worsening, in many cases significantly."

In this case, if trends continue as they do, we will have another mass extinction on our hands. However, it will not have been instigated by nature alone - humans will have played a large role.