Thursday 15 June 2017

Are we living in a mass extinction?

Is This a Mass Extinction - a Future Palaeontologist would not be able to say!

We identify mass previous mass extinctions from the fossil record - largely marine invertebrates, like brachiopods and bivalves. How many of these have gone extinct in the last few millennia - almost none. A hundred and fifty years ago there used to be 5 billion passenger pigeons, now there are none. How many fossilised passenger pigeons are there - two!

This article is not saying all is well - far from it. It mentions many of the current problems and scandals. But it cautions that if we were in a mass extinction it is already too late. The start of a mass extinction will probably be something innocuous - it is what happens after that will kill you!

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