Dead and dying are two very different things. If a person is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, their loved ones don't rush to write an obituary and plan a funeral. Likewise, species aren't declared extinct until they actually are. In a viral article entitled "Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016)," however, writer Rowan Jacobsen proclaimed ― inaccurately and, we can only hope, hyperbolically ― that Earth's largest living structure is dead and gone.
