Reading: Are We in the Middle of a Sixth Mass Extinction?

By Ann Gibbons
March 2, 2011 for Science Magazine (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/03/are-we-middle-sixth-mass-extinction)

Earth's creatures are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, comparable to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
That's the conclusion of a new study, which calculates that three-quarters of today's animal species could vanish
within 300 years. "This is really gloom-and-doom stuff," says the study's lead author, paleobiologist Anthony
Barnosky of the University of California, Berkeley. "But the good news is we haven't come so far down the
road that it's inevitable."

Species naturally come and go over long periods of time. But what sets a mass extinction apart is that three-
quarters of all species vanish quickly. Earth has already endured five mass extinctions, including the asteroid
that wiped out dinosaurs and other creatures 65 million years ago. Conservationists have warned for years that
we are in the midst of a sixth, human-caused extinction, with species from frogs to birds to tigers threatened by
climate change, disease, loss of habitat, and competition for resources with nonnative species. But how does this
new mass extinction compare with the other five?

Barnosky and colleagues took on this challenge by looking to the past. First, they calculated the rate at which
mammals, which are well represented in the fossil record, died off in the past 65 million years, finding an
average extinction rate of less than two species per million years. But in the past 500 years, a minimum of 80 of
5570 species of mammals have gone extinct, according to biologists' conservative estimates—an extinction rate
that is actually above documented rates for past mass extinctions, says Barnosky. All of this means that we're at
the beginning of a mass extinction that will play out over hundreds or thousands of years, his team concludes
online today in Nature. [Nature is a journal or magazine that publishes some of the most popular recent findings
by scientists.]

The picture gets even grimmer when all mammals currently endangered or threatened are added to the count. If
those all disappear within a century, then by 334 years from now, 75% of all mammal species will be gone, says
Barnosky. "Look outside of your window. Imagine taking away three-quarters of the living things you see and
ask yourself if you want to live in that world."

The team extended the same methods of analysis to amphibians, reptiles, birds, plants, mollusks, and other
forms of life. They found fairly consistent patterns: From amphibians to birds to mammals, about 1% to 2% of
species already are extinct today, and 20% to 50% are threatened—numbers that approach those of the great
mass extinctions of the past. "Our best guess is that the current extinction rate is between three to 80 times too
high" even without counting all threatened species, says Barnosky. "Assuming threatened species would
actually go extinct—which is not inevitable—puts the extinction rate off the charts."

"There's been a lot of general talk on this issue, but attempts to draw more rigorously on the lessons of the fossil
record have been rare," says paleobiologist David Jablonski of the University of Chicago in Illinois, who was
not involved in the study. "It's really valuable to look at how current losses stack up against the past extinction
events."

The silver lining in this dark cloud is that if humans work quickly to protect endangered and threatened species
and their habitats now, the mass extinction can be prevented or at least delayed by thousands of years, says
Barnosky. Adds Jablonski, "This approach provides a way to gauge progress in walking the world back from
that brink [of a mass extinction]."
Cornell Reading Notes: Sixth Mass Extinction
Complete a page of reading notes over the reading selection

Key Idea or Vocabulary: Notes about that Key Idea or Vocabulary:

Mass Extinction: A widespread, rapid vanishing of the earth’s population.

What’s causing the next mass Climate change, disease, loss of habitat, competition for resources, etc…
extinction?

Notes

There have been five mass extinctions on Earth.

Our current mass extinction will play out for hundreds of thousands of
years.

If the current endangered/threatened mammals go extinct within the

next century, we can expect to see three-quarters of mammal species
gone in the next 334 years.

20% to 50% of amphibians, mammals, reptiles, birds, plants, and mollusks

are endangered or threatened.
 Summary: What I learned about…What I’m wondering… 2-3 sentences

From reading the text, I learned that we are currently in the beginnings of a mass extinction due to our own
actions towards the Earth. Extinction rates for the majority of species on the planet are dropping rapidly.
However, we can still potentially prevent or delay the extinction for thousands of years if we take initiative.
Personally, I wonder what precautions we’ll have to take in the future if the state of world gets worse.

Questions about the reading. Answer each question in the space after the
question. Use complete sentences and thoughts in your answer.

1. How does the article define “mass extinction”?

The article defines mass extinction as a widespread, rapid vanishing of the Earth’s species.

2. What is the “normal” rate of extinction?

The normal extinction rate is less than two species every million years.

3. What evidence do we have that we are losing species at more than the normal rate?
 Studies have shown that including the endangered/threatened, the current extinction rate for
mammals is higher than past mass extinctions.

4. What evidence do we have that we are in a “mass extinction”? (Look back at the article’s
definition.)
Our current extinction rate is 80 times higher than it should be.

5. What questions did you have about the article?

(You can talk about words or ideas you didn’t understand from the reading, or you can list a couple of questions the
article doesn’t answer.)

● When will it be too late for us to take action against the current mass extinction?
● What can the average person do to contribute to the prevention of the next mass extinction?