A new mass extinction could be underway, researchers say
Angad Singh, for CNN
(CNN)Sixty-five million years ago, the dinosaurs disappeared in what's known as the Earth's fifth mass extinction. Today, a sixth mass extinction could be well underway and humans are the likely culprit, according to new research published in Science Advances.
The past five mass extinctions on Earth were caused by large-scale natural disasters like meteors or enormous chains of volcanic eruptions, wiping out between half and 96% of all living species.
But the modern mass extinction isn't being caused by a freak act of nature, the researchers say. It's being caused by man-made changes to the environment including deforestation, poaching, overfishing and global-warming, and it's proving to be just as deadly.
Recently, species like the Emperor Rat, the Desert Rat Kangaroo, the Yangtze River Dolphin, the Skunk Frog and the Chinese Paddlefish, amongst hundreds of others, are believed to have become extinct.
From CNN 2007: Chinese dolphin 'probably extinct'
About 477 vertebrate species have been lost since 1900, according to the research by Gerardo Ceballos, a senior ecological researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Anthony Barnosky, a biology professor at Berkeley.
If humans were not the primary source of these extinctions, there should've only been nine species going extinct during the same time period.
Looking ahead
The researchers fear that 75% of the species we know today could be lost in just two generations' time.
"We have the potential for making massive change... and the bottom line is that we can't be the generation responsible for wiping out three-fourths of life forms on the Earth," says Barnosky.
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/20/world/mass-extinction-animals/index.html