When the dinosaurs died, it was not the first time the bulk of living things disappeared on Earth, but the fifth mass extinction.
Now, there’s evidence another is ongoing, researchers from three respected universities warned.
It’s a worrisome theory for all living creatures, no matter their place on the food chain.
The study by researchers from Stanford, Princeton and the University of California at Berkeley, published last month in the journal Science Advances, concludes species are disappearing from the planet 114 times faster than they would normally. The rate is significant enough to be considered a mass extinction, in which abnormally large numbers of species perish in the same time frame.
Previous events include the Ordovician-Silurian extinction 440 million years ago, in which 85 percent of sea life perished; the Permian extinction 252 million years ago, in which 96 percent of species were wiped out; and the familiar Cretaceous-Tertiary event 66 million years ago, which killed the Tyrannosaurus rex and friends.
The idea of an oncoming mass extinction is not new; it was explored by science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Sixth Extinction” last year.
But the latest study gives new and disturbing credence to a calamity that appears to be gathering steam, as a wide range of animals, from little brown bats to honeybees, from the northern white rhinoceros to the western African lion, struggle to survive in plain sight.
Humans bear much of the blame, as when hunters killed the last living pair of great auks. The report injects fresh urgency into breeding programs and environmental fixes to combat the losses, which the authors say are exacerbated by development, carbon emissions and environmental toxins.
The previous extinctions, however, remind the world that Mother Nature can be a beast on her own. If humans can turn this foreboding ship around, they will evolve from villain to hero.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
