Physicists Show that Correlated Environmental Variations Can Quicken Extinctions
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 09:42
in Paleontology & Archaeology
(PhysOrg.com) -- In general, population extinction is a natural process. For one reason or another, an estimated 99.9% of all species that have lived on Earth are now extinct. However, the reasons for a species going extinct are complex, varied, and changing. Ever since the human population began dispersing throughout the Earth 100,000 years ago, the extinction rate has increased dramatically - as much as 1,000 times, by some estimates - putting us in the midst of a modern extinction called the Holocene extinction event.