Scientists Measure Start of Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction

A new study published in Nature this month reveals the shocking truth about mans impact upon the planet. The numbers of species under threat of extinction is growing fast, but says the report we are only in the first stages. Animal populations such as tigers, elephants and rhino are easy to measure.

The report is published by Anthony D. Barnosky and Charles Marshall both of UC Berkeley. Baronsky who is professor of integrative biology, curator of the Paleontology Museum and a Vertebrate Zoology research paleontologist says the tipping point has not yet been reached and it is not too late to save these critically endangered mammals and other such species. The causes are linked to destabilisation of sustainable habitats and ecological processes involved in climate controls, with resulting adverse weather events and invasion of opportunistic species and disease.

The common association with this potential impending mass extinction is that man has been involved in almost all the processes.

Marshall, who is UC Berkeley professor of Integrative Biology and director of the Paleontology Museum says we are not yet far down the road to extinction with only 1 to 2 percent of all species in the groups they looked at having so far gone extinct. So we are not in a crisis, and there are plenty of species to save.

The study originated in a graduate seminar Barnosky organized in 2009 to bring biologists and paleontologists together in an attempt to compare the extinction rate seen in the fossil record with today’s extinction record. These are “like comparing apples and oranges,” Barnosky said. For one thing, the fossil record goes back 3.5 billion years, while the historical record goes back only a few thousand years. In addition, the fossil record has many holes, making it is impossible to count every species that evolved and subsequently disappeared, which probably amounts to 99 percent of all species that have ever existed. A different set of data problems complicates counting modern extinctions.

Black Howler Monkey - IUCN Endangered

But, Barnosky adds "It's very important to devote resources and legislation toward species conservation if we don't want to be the species whose activity caused a mass extinction."

Has Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?