New York: The world is embarking on its sixth mass extinction with animals disappearing about 100 times faster than they used to, and humans could be among the first victims, scientists warned on Saturday.
Not since the age of the dinosaurs ended 66 million years ago has the planet been losing species at this rapid a rate, said a study led by experts at Stanford University, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, First Post reported.
The study “shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,” co-author Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University professor of biology, said. Humans are likely to be among the species lost, said the study, which its authors described as “conservative”.
The analysis is based on documented extinctions of vertebrates, or animals with internal skeletons such as frogs, reptiles and tigers, from fossil records and other historical data. The causes of species loss range from climate change to pollution to deforestation and more.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, about 41 per cent of all amphibian species and 26 per cent of all mammals are threatened with extinction.
