New research has proven that the extinction of millions of species was expedited by mankind.
According to Quartz, a study published in Conservation Biology examined fossil records, extinction rates and genetic changes and determined nature is responsible for driving just one out of every 10 million species to extinction.
This is much less than researchers thought, as previous estimations have hypothesized that 10 out of every 10 million species would go extinct each year without any interference from humans.
Stuart Pimm, one of the study’s co-authors, said,
We’ve known for 20 years that current rates of species extinctions are exceptionally high. This new study comes up with a better estimate of the normal background rate—how fast species would go extinct were it not for human actions.
It’s lower than we thought, meaning that the current extinction crisis is much worse by comparison.
The extinction rate has skyrocketed since the arrival of mankind; more than 1,000 out of every 10 million species become extinct each year due to our influences.
This means we are destroying species at least 1,000 times faster than new species are being created.
Future estimates posit that plants and animals will eventually go extinct at up to 10,000 times the rate of creation.
Quartz’s Gwynn Guilford notes how the study’s authors compared the diversification of a species to a bank account.
The constantly increasing income represents the number of new species emerging over time, and the money spent is those that die out.
In nature, there is no steady increase in income, so the account dwindles faster than creation can even things out.
Without mankind, Pimm writes on his blog, just one out of the 10,000 species of birds would disappear every 1,000 years.
But at least 140 species of birds have disappeared since the year 1500, 13 of which we didn’t even know about until they were extinct.
via Quartz, Photo Credit: Getty Images
Read more: http://elitedaily.com/news/world/humans-responsible-extinction-1000-times-faster-created/740477/
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