Current Mass Extinction Events

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.

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

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

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.

Depending on the climate and the environment and physical settings, spices biodiversity will differ greatly. For example, hot humid climate allows a lot of insects.

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

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

It is now generally believed that the K–Pg extinction was triggered by a massive comet or asteroid impact 66 million years ago and its catastrophic effects on the global environment, including a lingering impact winter that made it impossible for plants and plankton to carry out photosynthesis. The fact

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”.

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.

Since the beginning of life itself, some species have lived and prospered while other species have gone extinct never to be seen again by mankind. Because of this, some would claim that extinction is natural and not significantly problematic to the world that we live in. Others, however, understand that due to climate change, habitat loss, and poaching, more and more species are becoming endangered which leads to a chain reaction that can be devastating to ecosystems. Species such as the Chinook salmon, gorillas, tropical sharks, and polar bears are all directly affected by climate change, species such as northern spotted owls, Sumatran tigers, and lemurs are greatly harmed due to habitat loss, and species such as the sea turtle, Javan rhinoceros, African elephant, and the Red-Fronted Macaw are all affected by poaching driving them all closer and closer to becoming extinct.

Extinction is a natural thing, and it has happened for as long as there has been any form of life on Earth.

It’s clear that a great extinction is coming from the evidence of the destruction of other species around us. The choices made by the human race have too often negatively affected the surrounding species. Tracy Wilson, the site director for HowStuffWorks.com, in an article for Animal Planet, states that

Since before the industrial evolutions humans have been pumping green house gasses—carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons— into the atmosphere however, it wasn’t until recently that the amounts being produced are shoving the Earth into a sixth extinction. While the causes of this upcoming extinction are constantly debated on it has earned itself the name Holocene extinction. This name is derived from the theory that humans are the main contributors to this extinction. To investigate the cause Elizabeth Kolbert, and American journalist and professor at Williams College, took the world on a wild and saddening journey on the human contribution to this looming extinction in her novel, The Sixth Extinction; An Unnatural History. Not only does Kolbert’s book explain how humans have contributed to global warming and its effects on life on land but also ocean acidification and how life under the sea has changed over the years.

Mass extinctions occur when an extremely large amount of species go extinct, meaning most life on Earth dies out. However, there are always a handful of lucky species who make it through. Although each mass extinction has a different cause, there are qualities in species that consistently allow them to survive these events. What determines whether a species survives a mass extinction is its size, population distribution, and diet.