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From the space rock that killed the dinosaurs to the supervolcanoes that pass over out about 90 pct of the mankind ’s metal money , quite a little extinctionshave occurred a handful of times throughout Earth ’s history . And if human are n’t careful , the planet may be due for another one .
" It ’s the ultimate fate of every species to go out , " say Anthony Barnosky , a palaeontologist at the University of California , Berkeley . Barnosky is one of the scientist featured in a newfangled Smithsonian Channel special call " Mass Extinction : Life At The Brink , " premiering Sunday ( Nov. 30 ) at 8 p.m. ET ( check local listing ) .
Unlike this T-Rex, humans can see the next mass extinction coming.
There have been five mass extinction in the last half - billion years , Barnosky , author of the Holy Scripture " Dodging Extinction " ( University of California Press , 2014 ) , tell Live Science .
asteroid and volcano
The dinosaur met their end when a giant 6 - mile - wide-cut ( 9.7 kilometers ) asteroid or comet thwack into Earth in the Gulf of Mexico 66 million days ago , igniting fires and pumping ash and sulfur into the standard pressure , blocking out the sunlight . The impact caused about 71 to 81 percent of all mintage — including nonavian dinosaurs — to go extinct , though some scientist saydinosaur populations had been on the declinealready for millions of years .
Before the reign of the dinosaur , there was an even more deathly defunctness at the end of the Permian Era , 252 million class ago . This one was spark by monolithic volcanic eruptions , which produce enough lava to sink an arena the size of the continental United States under 1,000 understructure ( 305 meter ) of lava , changing the interpersonal chemistry of the atmosphere and the ocean . As much as 97 percent of species on Earth went nonextant in the issue , aptly named the Great Dying .
Scientists still do n’t correspond on what caused the other three stack experimental extinction — the End - Ordovician ( 440 million years ago ) , the Late Devonian ( 375 million to 359 million twelvemonth ago ) and the End - Triassic ( 201 million age ago ) .
While the triggers of these deadly events have been unlike , they all have some thing in common : changes in climate , and changes in atmospheric and ocean interpersonal chemistry , Barnosky said .
" Those changes were rapid compared to what was normal , and that ’s exactly the same thing that ’s lead on today , " Barnosky said . " Today , we are very intelligibly at the rootage level of a 6th mickle extinction . "
Change our ways
humankind have wiped out one-half of the world ’s wildlife population in the past 40 years , and fished out 90 per centum of the planet ’s big Pisces , Barnosky said . " If we proceed that up , we ’d be destined to see the deprivation of about 75 pct of species we ’re familiar with within a span of centuries , " if not sooner , he add .
Barnosky does n’t reckon human organism will go out as a result of what we ’re doing , but rather our current way of life may not exist . manhood depends on many other species , and their loss would lead to societal conflicts and economic crashes , Barnosky articulate . moreover , when aggregative extinctions bump , biodiversity crashes , and it takes hundreds of thousand of years for ecosystems to bring back to pre - crash levels .
But there ’s still hope . Only about 1 percent of the species on the planet have been lose in the preceding 12,000 eld . And unlike the dinosaur , humans can see the extinction coming and prevent it , said Sean Carroll , a biologist and science communicator at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute .
Barnosky consort . " Most of what we need to spare is still out there to be saved , but we have to do thing otherwise , " he said .
First of all , order needs to present climate change , which is subjecting many species to condition they have never faced before , Barnosky pronounce .
Secondly , he said , humanity demand to break converting animal habitat to suit our own motive . Already , citizenry have translate about half of the planet ’s land to corroborate man , mainly for agricultural function .
And finally , human being need to start putting an economic value on nature . " We have to look at nature as an investment story , where we do n’t relate the principal , and we subsist off the interest , " Barnosky said .
Barnosky reckon that , if the message stimulate across to enough mass , humanity could avert the coming disaster . " I ’m guardedly optimistic , " he said .
