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Mammals cannot evolve fast enough to escape current extinction crisis

  

Category:  Health, Science & Technology

Via:  dignitatem-societatis  •  6 years ago  •  10 comments

Mammals cannot evolve fast enough to escape current extinction crisis

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T




Humans are exterminating animal and plant species so quickly that nature's built-in defence mechanism, evolution, cannot keep up. An Aarhus-led research team calculated that if current conservation efforts are not improved, so many mammal species will become extinct during the next five decades that nature will need 3 to 5 million years to recover.

There have been five upheavals over the past 450 million years when the environment has changed so dramatically that the majority of Earth's plant and animal species became extinct. After each mass extinction, evolution has slowly filled in the gaps with new species.

The sixth mass extinction is happening now, but this time, the extinctions are not being caused by natural disasters; they are the work of humans. A team of researchers from Aarhus University and the University of Gothenburg has calculated that the extinctions are moving too rapidly for evolution to keep up.

If mammals diversify at their normal rates, it will still take them 5 to 7 million years to restore biodiversity to its level before modern humans evolved, and 3-5 million years just to reach current biodiversity levels, according to the analysis, which was published recently in PNAS.

Full Article at Phys.org


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Dig
Professor Participates
1  seeder  Dig    6 years ago
The researchers came up with a best-case scenario of the future, where humans have stopped destroying habitats and eradicating species, reducing extinction rates to the low background levels seen in fossils. However, even with this overly optimistic scenario, it will take mammals 3-5 million years just to diversify enough to regenerate the branches of the evolutionary tree that they are expected to lose over the next 50 years.

 
 
 
A. Macarthur
Professor Guide
1.1  A. Macarthur  replied to  Dig @1    6 years ago

Politicians, profiteers and willing/dupe citizens who are pandered to via religiosity, bigotry and other biases, will continue to vote against their own economic, health and environmental interests.

 
 
 
charger 383
Professor Silent
2  charger 383    6 years ago

I keep saying overpopulation is our biggest problem

 
 
 
Dig
Professor Participates
2.1  seeder  Dig  replied to  charger 383 @2    6 years ago

Exponential growth is going to kick us in the ass before we know it.

 
 
 
Nowhere Man
Junior Participates
2.1.1  Nowhere Man  replied to  Dig @2.1    6 years ago

Well, the world is decidedly closer to it's next ELE, than it is closer to it's prior one.....

 
 
 
Ender
Professor Principal
3  Ender    6 years ago

Sad really. I can see just around my town where wooded areas once stood. Replaced by more subdivisions and roads.

 
 
 
A. Macarthur
Professor Guide
3.1  A. Macarthur  replied to  Ender @3    6 years ago

Developers and profiteers pave paradise and build communities with names like Willowwood or Whispering Pines ... right over the razed forests they destroy to build them.

What s disgusting hypocritical irony that a self-ascribed “creationist” is likely to support anti-environmentalist, climate denier, energy-company beholden politicians!

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
4  Kavika     6 years ago

In wildness is the preservation of the world...Henry David Thoreau. 

 
 

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