Study cientifio sixth mass extinction on Earth – ElTiempo.com

The world is beginning to suffer the sixth mass extinction in its history. Currently, animals disappearing at a rate 100 times higher than they used to, warn scientists. And humans might be among them. Since the end of the era of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the planet had not lost species as high as now rate, according to a study conducted by experts from the universities of Stanford, Princeton and California in Berkeley.

The study “shows beyond doubt that we are entering the sixth major mass extinction,” said co-author Paul Ehrlich, professor of biology at Stanford. And human is probably one of the lost species, the study, described by its authors as conservative, reported in the journal ‘Science Advances’ he said.

“If this is allowed to continue, life will take millions of years to recover, and our own species is probably extinct soon, “said study lead author Gerardo Ceballos, of the Autonomous University of Mexico.

The analysis is based on the documented extinctions of vertebrates, ie animals with internal skeletons as frogs, reptiles and tigers from fossil records and other historical data. Modern rate of species extinction was then compared to “the natural rate of extinction of species before human activity dominate (Earth)”.

It may be difficult to estimate this rate , also known as background extinction rate, because humans do not know exactly what happened in the course of the history of 4,500 million years of the Earth.

For the study The researchers used a last extinction rate twice as high as estimates that are generally used.

If the last rate-or natural– rate was two extinctions of mammals each 10,000 species over 100 years, then the “average rate of disappearance of vertebrate species in the last century is 114 times higher than it would have been if there had been human activity,” says the study.

“And this even based on conservative estimates of the rate of species extinction,” he adds. “We insist that our calculations probably underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis, because our goal was to put a realistic but limit the human impact on biodiversity subre”.

Causes the current extinction of species are, among others, climate change, pollution and deforestation.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), about 41% of all amphibians and 26% of mammal species are currently threatened with extinction.

“There are examples of species around the world who are basically living dead,” Ehrlich said.

The study asked to “intensify and accelerate measures to conserve the species as threatened and relieve pressure on their populations, as habitat loss, exploitation of resources purposes economic and climate change “.

AFP