What´s Sixth Mass Extinction?

The rate of natural extinction occurs at a rate of one to five species every year. According to Joanna Zelmen, from The Huffington Post, there are over 2,500 species of coral alone, and they could all be threatened by the year 2050. Humans uphold the biggest influence on the diminishing reefs through overfishing, construction, and pollution, but we can also have the biggest impact to help these strange yet beautiful animals.

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

A mass extinction is an event in which at least 25-75% of species in the global environment are eradicated in a short period of time. Where as a regional extinction event is when the extinction is confined to a specific zone. Five mass extinctions have occurred throughout time, two of the most well known of these are the Permian and Cretaceous extinction events.

I was think that is true because this is what happens when you think you have a lot of something and than its gone and than you have none of that stuff left and people don’t think about after they are always think about now and now that its happening people are starting to make changes but its going to take a while because people have routines and its going to feel different because people are so used to doing things that they are not aware that its doing something to

Over the course of its 4.5-billion-year history, the Earth has seen the rise and fall of many populations of organisms. However, in Earth’s history, there have been five big mass extinction events, characterized as “periods in Earth's history when abnormally large numbers of species die out simultaneously or within a limited time frame.” (BBC) These events are cataclysmic enough to wipeout at least 50% of all organisms living during that period. The causes of mass extinction are many from the asteroids that sealed the fate of the dinosaurs to the volcanoes that choked out air to 96% of the organismic population during the Permian extinction, however one of the most recent yet potent mechanisms of bringing upon a mass extinction are humans.

I chose to focus on the most recent extinction: The Cretaceous Event. This mass extinction happened at least 65 million years ago and wiped out 76% of the Earth’s species. According to our textbooks there are many explanations as to what happened.The first one states that there had been a comet or asteroid that impacted Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and then that caused global destruction and rapid cooling. Another explanation that scientists have come up with is an increase in volcanic eruptions. Both explanations could have lead to the sky being clouded with debris. The Earth was then deprived of solar energy and photosynthesis could not occur resulting in the death of many plants, this then lead to the disruption of the food chain. Other alternative

Throughout the lifetime of the Earth, there have been various scientists who have hypothesized various extinction events. The following essay will cover the five major extinction events, otherwise known as the “Big 5 Mass Extinction Events”. According to Wikipedia (2016), a mass extinction is “a widespread and rapid decrease in the amount of life on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms”.

The earth has been around for 4.6 billion years, and over this time 99.9% of all of the species that have existed on earth have gone extinct. (Barnosky, et al) Palaeontologists characterize mass extinctions as times in Earth’s history when the Earth loses more than three-quarters of its species in a geologically short period of time. This has occurred 5 times over the past 540 million years, and scientists are now suggesting it is happening a 6th time. We are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction that has the potential to wipe out many species of importance, and humans have a profound impact on it.

During Dr. Whitfield’s seminar, he discussed his recent research on a rare disease known as systemic sclerosis. From my understanding, systemic sclerosis is an autoimmune or connective tissue disease that causes thickening of the skin and injuries to the vascular system. This disease causes death when significant organs are affected. However, Dr. Whitfield’s research requires sequencing a person’s entire genome in order to give them proper treatment. Systemic sclerosis has subsets that respond to treatments differently, but to precisely identify the specific treatment a patient may need, his or her entire genome sequenced. People are hesitant about being compared to their genetic determinism, so this raises ethical concerns. I, for one, believe

There has being a reduction of cost of genome sequencing in the last couple of years, however some ethical and social problems of genome sequencing are the privacy of the patient and discrimination risks. With the current evolvement of technology, keeping information safe is hard therefore there are risk of information becoming public which may affect charges for health or life insurance and stigmatization. Also, with genome sequencing there are secondary (random) findings which may cause more apprehension or concern for the patient. With these findings, medical professionals are faced with the decision if they should inform the patient or not.

One reason a mass extinction can be plausible is because a lot of the previous periods have also been caused by mass extinctions. A lot of these extinctions were triggered by some change in the weather or atmosphere. Earth’s climate today, is becoming increasingly warmer and carbon dioxide levels are increasing which might potential be too much for humans and animals to take.

In this article they calculate the rate of extinction before humans as well as the rate of extinctions during human existence. The article helps the viewer to understand how much the human population has affected the rate of extinction.

In conclusion animal’s population are change, resources are decreasing, organism interaction is changing, and animal’s population rate is changing, but human are trying to help. To sum up everything the 6th Mass Extinction could come sooner than

There have been five well known extinctions on this earth. The one most well known is the mass extinction that ended the dinosaurs. Mass extinction is often described as the elimination of a large number of species in a short period of time. Despite what many think, the elimination of species is almost commonplace at this point. The Earth is currently in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, and it’s been caused by the human race.

Over 98% of all organisms that have lived on Earth are now extinct. A mass extinction event occurs when a large number of species die out within a small time frame (relative to the age of Earth). Mass extinctions are intensively studied for both cause and effect, as there is usually room for debate regarding catalysts that precede the extinction and the massive influx of new biological species that follows. There have been five major mass extinctions, dubbed the “Big Five,” that have wiped out at least 50% of the species living at those times. The most well known mass extinction of the Big Five, with the decimation of every species of non-avian dinosaur, is the Cretaceous-Paleogene