- Pace at which species vanish accelerated during the past 100 years to roughly 1,000 times what it was before humans showed up
- Humans appear to be causing a cataclysm of extinction more severe than any since the one that erased the dinosaurs 65 million years ago
- The Sinking Ark that 40,000 species lose their last member each year and that one million would be extinct by 2000
- More recent projections factor in a slightly slower demise because some doomed species have hung on longer than anticipated.
- Bavarian vole, found in Eurasia presumed extinct mammal (since 1500), also is still there
- 70% scientists said they believed that a mass extinction is in progress
- Third of the scientists expected to lose 20 to 50 percent of the world's species within 30 years
- To the numbers on we need to know the natural background extinction rate, the current rate and whether the pace of extinction issteady or changing
- Species of plants, mammals, insects, marine invertebrates and other groups all exist for about the same time.
- Assume that all organisms have an equal chance of making it into the fossil record. 4% of all species that ever live are preserved as fossils
- the weak species confined to some hilltop or island all went extinct before they could be fossilized
- The current rate of mammalian extinction lies between 17 and 377 times the background extinction in rate
- Over the past 200 years the rate of loss among mammal species has been some 120 times higher than natural.
- Vulnerable freshwater fish have more than a quarter species listed as threatened
- Habitat and species as well as population are all proportional
- Smart goal is to conserve the greatest amount of evolutionary history.
- Woodruff has broader principle.
- Some of us advocate a shift from saving things, the products of evolution, to save the underlying process, evolution itself.
In 30 years 20-50% of the species on earth will become extinct. The rapid extinct is extremely dangerous, because it doesn't give the environment enough time to create evolve. Humans are the cause of this rapid extinction and because of this 70% of scientist believe that we are currently in a mass extinction. This is the fastest mass extinction to ever happen.