Current Mass Extinction Events

Extinction: Most species become extinct because they can’t cope with the environmental change, and also because of introduced species that turned into competitors for

Some of the ways we have extinguished species include, climate change, air pollution causing ocean acidification, accidental imports of plants animals or fungi, fragmenting and destroying habitats, and poaching and killing animals for resources. I agree with Kolbert. We humans are making the planet difficult for other species to live in. One of the ways that we are killing species is accidental or intentional imports of plants and animals. Kolbert talked about the Pangea.

The book I choose The Sixth Extinction, is by a woman who is a journalist for The New Yorker. So when I did my search, articles by her were the first that presented themselves. I have to admit, I cheated a little bit in that I used the first three news links that were not by her.

In a summary, Kolbert explains the extinctions of a variety of different major animal species that became extinct. She also explains that if trends in the environment continue that the biggest extinction in history will occur soon. If global warming, deforestation, and glaciers continue to melt she says that more and more species will continue to become extinct. She explains how humans need to be more conservative and careful with what they’re doing to prevent extinction.

Five mass extinctions have occurred throughout the history of planet Earth. It is predicted by Author Elizabeth Kolbert, that a sixth extinction may be underway. The Sixth Extinction is a book in the viewpoint of Kolbert and narrates her travels around the globe while she studies numerous wildlife species. Kolbert claims that ¨Those of us alive today not only are witnessing one of the rarest events in life's history, we are also causing it,” (Kolbert, Page 8). Throughout her work, Kolbert claims that numerous species are decreasing in population due to harmful human activities, which could lead to a global disaster.

Several man-made threats have accelerated extinction rates across the globe, such as global warming, pollution, and introduced species. Current extinction rates

Has Earth entered into a new geologic epoch, characterized by human influences? A recent study, spear-headed by the British Geological Survey, has come to the conclusion that man’s global impact has become distinct enough to end the Holocene and effectively begin the Anthropocene. Published in Science, the study identifies how man’s impact on our oceans, resources, climate, and vegetation has altered the sedimentary makeup of the planet. Massive species invasions, increased rates of extinction, genetically modified plants, redistributed metals, sediment, hydrocarbons, fossils, increased levels of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus all combine to create signals that geologists interpret to denote a break in the Holocene

An extinction event (also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the amount of life on Earth. It occurs when the rate of extinction increases with respect to the rate of speciation. Extinction occurs at an uneven rate.

The Cretaceous mass extinction is the most well-known case of meteorite impact on the earth, but it certainly is not the only one. It is merely the most well-known. Due to the impact, debris entered earth's atmosphere and caused the plant life of the time to die off due to the lack of sunlight to survive. This made food much more scarce for the species that were dominant at the time. The competition was simply too much for them, and as the plant life died out, so did the herbivores and then the carnivores died out as well. Not only the land was impacted, however, the sea life was affected heavily by this impact as well. The lack of sunlight caused the oceans to become colder, causing the habitats of many marine animals to be drastically altered

The Cretaceous mass extinction had two theories on how and why it happened through the impact hypothesis. The first one was suggested that an asteroid collided with Earth 65 million years ago. Luis Alvarez and his son, Walter Alvarez found “high levels of the rare metal iridium” in the layers of the Earth during the periods of the Cretaceous and Tertiary located in Italy. Their proof is that it was the cause of extinction by an asteroid the size of 10 kilometers. The second impact hypothesis was from a crater that was found buried off the coast of Yucatan, Mexico. Due to the material that was thrown from the crater into the air, plant life could not receive sunlight to survive. The same goes for animals as the atmosphere was filled with dangerous

After calculating a global mean extinction rate and figuring out which factors came into play, Urban concluded that extinction risks rise as global temperature rises. It is important for us to observe the effect that climate change has on extinction because, as Urban mentioned, “0 to 54% of species could become extinct from climate change”.

During Late Pleistocene a megafaunal mass extinction took place. It’s still debated whether humans are to blame for this, since this megafaunal extinction happened after the arrival of humans or if climate change is entirely to blame. Fossil evidence has been of great help in finding what factors might’ve caused this extinction. This mass extinction that took place is related to the Anthropocene because if humans were the main cause, humans need to be more careful now because their actions may lead to more extinctions. The observations made were the types of species that went extinct with climate change, and what humans did to contribute to this mass extinction.

4)thesis: Species Extinction is a big issue today, though there are a few different viewpoints on how quickly species

Comparing and contrasting the mass extinction and the current extinction. Scientist say that we are causing the 6th extinction. An extinction is when all of a certain animal or plant is gone and nothing left of it. In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting these 2 extinctions.

The scale and pace of change is dramatic; for example, the extinction of species is occurring at around 100-fold pre-human rates4. The population sizes of vertebrate species have, on average, declined by half over the last 45 years5. More than 2.3 million km2 of primary forest has been felled since 20006. About