Mass extinctions

[urbpan]

I wrote here about mass extinctions recently, and I think I wasn't clear in the discussion that followed in the comments. We are currently involved in the sixth mass extinction event in the history of life on earth. What makes it different from the others?

Of course, you might say that if Earth has recovered from five waves of species loss in the prehistoric past, what’s the big deal this time round? Well, it is being driven by a single species, while the other five were triggered by climatic upheavals. And it’s up to that single species — us — to decide the fate of the biosphere for the next five million years, which is the minimum time it takes to replace species after a mass extinction.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1665204,00120003.htm

I know as an environmentalist I'm among the doomsayers, but I find the figure of 5 million years to be encouraging, if optimistic.

Comments

[featheredfrog.livejournal.com]

um... isn't the ultimate destiny of EVERY species extinction?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Sure....but what's your point, as related to the quote above?

The problem is loss of biodiversity, and the rate of extinction. Every species will eventually become extinct, but currently the rate is something like 1000 times faster than it would be without human activity.

[obsidiangecko.livejournal.com]

Good point, but I would say the goal of a species is continuing survival, rather than extinction... no species strives to destroy its self, ( except perhaps us!) rather it adapts and changes to increase it's fitness within its environment and eventually evolves to become something else. So the species as we knew it may be extinct, but its progeny lives on in another form.


I for one have great confidence in the survival of this world, but only once humanity is gone, or has bucked up its ideas significanty.... !

[ex-wellread.livejournal.com]

I fear our future will only have domesticated animals in the future. Dogs, cats, cows, pigs, horses etc. Judging by comments on the internet most people shrug there shoulders at the thought of a world without magnificent creatures such a polar bears, elephants, primates and other large animals.

I think the world will be a lesser and duller place without wild animals and birds. It's sad to know that maybe in a couple of hundred years that most large animals will be only seen in books.

[anais2.livejournal.com]

We humans do seem to specialize in murder-suicides. Hard to imagine that natural law as practiced in the past would apply to what we as a species have done to this planet.

Maybe rapidly mutating viruses are nature's attempt to curb our devastating influence.

[maybethecat.livejournal.com]

good point, i have had many heated debates over this with my mom

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

That and massive natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis.