Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction Has Begun, U.S. Study Confirms

Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction Has Begun, U.S. Study Confirms


Published on Jun 21, 2015

The Earth has entered a new period of extinction, a study by three US universities has concluded, and humans could be among the first casualties.
The report, led by the universities of Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley, said vertebrates were disappearing at a rate 114 times faster than normal.

The findings echo those in a report published by Duke University last year. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/new-re...

One of the new study's authors said: "We are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event." http://advances.sciencemag.org/conten...

The last such event was 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs were wiped out, in all likelihood by a large meteor hitting Earth.
"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said the lead author, Gerardo Ceballos.

BBC
Read more here: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-envir...

Stanford biologist warns of early stages of Earth's 6th mass extinction event
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/ju...