Tech | September 02, 2010 | 52 comments

Earth's Animals Face GRIM Future | Major Extinction Event Is Taking Place

source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38976860/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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EthicalVegan
Earth's animals face grim future

Major extinction event taking place, with many wondering what animals will disappear from the planet forever

Getty Images: Two of the most important and plentiful groups of marine animals 250 million years ago were corals and brachiopods, also called lamp shells. After the Great Dying, corals were almost wiped out

By Jennifer Viegas
updated 9/2/2010 2:34:41 PM ET



Corals, big mammals and many tropical species could all go extinct in the not too distant future, predict scientists who are attempting to forecast the fate of today's animals by studying what happened to those in the distant past.

A complication is that no prior mass extinction event on the planet was driven by a single species. In a period of more than a half-billion years, only three such extinction events appear to have been as devastating as the present one, which is being caused by humans.

"We're 100 percent responsible for it," John Alroy, a researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University, told Discovery News.

"There is no precedent at all for what we're doing," he added. "All well-understood extinctions in the deep fossil record are tied to environmental changes that were not triggered by the behavior of individual species, such as the asteroid impact 65 million years ago that wiped out the terrestrial (non-avian) dinosaurs."

Alroy used the Paleobiology Database, which compiles data from nearly 100,000 fossil collections worldwide, to track the fate of major groups of animals during Earth's most massive extinction event 250 million years ago: the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, also known as the "Great Dying."

Alroy, whose findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Science, focused on marine animals, since the fossil record includes many such species.

He determined that two of the most important and plentiful groups of marine animals 250 million years ago were corals and brachiopods, also called lamp shells. After the Great Dying, corals were almost wiped out.


"There are almost no early Triassic coral fossils in the world," explained Alroy, who added that corals "eventually recovered all of their lost diversity."

The lamp shells, on the other hand, never recovered. While they're still in existence, they exhibit little diversity and not many of them are around compared to other animal populations.


He said these are just a few examples from the past that demonstrate how a species-rich animal group may not necessarily fare well after a major extinction event. The rules governing their, and other animals', diversity change over time, and really go off the chart during and after mass extinction events.

Species-rich animal groups "could happen to be very vulnerable to the particular mechanism that creates a particular mass extinction," he said. They could also lose all of their subspecies, or "during the scramble to fill empty niches after a mass extinction, rival groups may get there first, making it difficult for a group to get back where it was."

Alroy is particularly worried about today's corals.

"They don't seem to do well when there's a big environmental change," he explained. "It's possible that future reef builders won't be corals at all. At different times in the past, reefs have been built by such organisms as sponges and clams."

Mammals with big body sizes, highly endemic tropical species, and certain plants may also die out before this latest extinction event concludes, Charles Marshall told Discovery News. Marshall is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley, where he also directs the university's Museum of Paleontology. He wrote an accompanying "Perspectives" article in the latest Science.



Marshall agrees with Alroy that studying past extinctions and diversity patterns can help us to learn what makes different groups of animals more or less prone to dying out.

In terms of humanity's impact on the planet, Marshall also agrees that "we have no evidence of a single species causing such havoc."

"However," he added, "if you are willing to broaden the taxonomic scope a little, when cyanobacteria started producing oxygen in abundance, they basically poisoned the world, converting it from one that was primarily anoxic (without oxygen) to one that was oxic."
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52 comments // Earth's Animals Face GRIM Future | Major Extinction Event Is Taking Place

  • csmonut
    • 0
      csmonut  

    • I heard a comment this morning on NPR on a upcoming interview. I did not listen to the interview, but the man said something to the effect, that humans can live anywhere because they adapt so easily.
      I tend to disagree with that.
      Man does not adapt...he changes the environment around him to suit his needs. And he has changed the environment to such a point that he is now on the verge of destroying it.
      Will humans stop the destruction before it's too late? Even with small pockets of progress taking place aorund the world, I have my days of total doubt.

    • 1 year ago
  • MrMxyzptlk
  • csmonut
  • MrMxyzptlk
  • csmonut
    • +1
      csmonut  
    • MrMxyzptlk:

      I was disagreeing with the remark about humans ability to adapt to their surroundings.
      I was also remarking about our changing of the environment to suit ourselves to the point that many environments are on the verge of collapse because of those changes humans have made.
      And yes, life goes by pretty fast...but does that mean we disregard the future generations and the world in which they will live?
      And yes...I do keep up....with very little confusion in between:)

    • 1 year ago
  • MrMxyzptlk
  • csmonut
    • +1
      csmonut  
    • MrMxyzptlk:

      I never even insinuated that we should have left things as they are and still live in caves thinking fire was a cool thing.
      You do not think we have the responsibility to take care of the environment? We don't owe it to those who come after to leave them clean air, water and soil?
      Since we have the ability to change our environment to suit us, then we should have ability to be good stewards of it. Something that is not happening as it should.

    • 1 year ago
  • MrMxyzptlk
  • csmonut
  • MrMxyzptlk
  • csmonut
    • +1
      csmonut  
    • MrMxyzptlk:

      All life may not end on this ball of mud, but it could easily become totally unihabitable by humans and many other life forms.
      As to the reference to "you folks", we're all on this planet together.
      And one of the biggest problems is, as humans we may learned from our mistakes, but we have done very little to nothing to correct them.

      Corrections we make may not be the right ones and we would have to alter our path, but at least it would be a step in the direction of correcting a mistake rather than ignoring it. As is happening now.

    • 1 year ago
  • ayipis
    • -2
      ayipis  
    • Image

    • HAHHAHAH even the guardians of peace has its militant wing..

      http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/03/maryland.discovery.channel/index.html

      (CNN) -- The gunman who held three people hostage at the Discovery Channel headquarters was once convicted of smuggling an illegal immigrant into the country from Mexico.
      In 2003, James Lee, pleaded guilty to smuggling a woman from Tijuana, according to documents from a California federal court. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the crime.
      In court documents, Lee admitted to smuggling immigrants at least three times and being paid for it.

      ****************

      when you guys start seeing liberals coming in to save you..RUN

    • 1 year ago
  • GodIsTheReason
  • ayipis
    • -2
      ayipis  

    • dont breath too much..your killing everybody..LOL

      (maybe its normal..species die off all the time..even us will eventually cease to exist)

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
  • Kurta
    • +1
      Kurta  

    • Sometimes I wonder if an extinction event would be enough to tone down humanity's arrogance...Probably not. *sigh*

    • 1 year ago
  • ayipis
  • Kurta
  • DogBoy
    • 0
      DogBoy  

    • The answer is simple we move to alternative fuels live green lifestyles and implement a more agrarian resource based world economy or get rid or reduce the human infestation If Humans go extinct then everything lives right? If our Planet goes extinct everything dies.

    • 1 year ago
  • tommic
    • 0
      tommic  

    • For those who would claim humans have no influence over whats happening, you need to go back to school and study some sciences. Mankinds expanding population, agriculture, mineral exploration and fossil fuel mining and drilling along with Co2 expended coupled with natural events are responsible for the great fifth extinction now under way. Deniers are just uneducated or undereducated but the truth is plain and simple, they have never read all material both in support and denial and lack the deductive reasoning to proccess and evaluate the information at hand.

    • 1 year ago
  • IceKat
  • tommic
    • +1
      tommic  
    • IceKat:

      If you cannot utilize deductive reasoning after absorbing all the material available both for and against, yes you are stupid. You said it first I didn't

    • 1 year ago
  • IceKat
    • -1
      IceKat  
    • tommic:

      Well, I must admit I haven't read all the material, and I'm pretty sure you haven't either. What I have read, and the amount of debunking of the non-science I have read over the years has led me to be fairly convinced that the vast majority of the scaremongering predictions such as this are all either totally wrong, or a severe overestimation of what could possible happen in a worst case scenario.
      The problem is the predictions are always far too dramatic and unrealistic, and past predictions have all been way off the mark. Why should we now believe articles like this which are thin on observed facts and rely far too much on the reader having too much faith in the author - without question.
      One really has to wonder who is the stupid one, the person who falls hook line and sinker for the propaganda, or the one who, at least, questions what he is being fed.

    • 1 year ago
  • tommic
    • 0
      tommic  
    • IceKat:

      Being pretty sure of anything is paramount to making mistakes. To assume is a weak way to interpert what any person says or writes . I unlike many have the benifit of time. I no longer need to work so I may research what I am interested in. For you to assume anything about me is ignorant at best and stupid at worst. If you think your intelligent remember to never assume anything. In the meantime put your opinions behind you when it comes to questionable situations and READ, only then can you become educated on any given subject

    • 1 year ago
  • IceKat
    • -1
      IceKat  
    • tommic:

      "To assume is a weak way to interpert what any person says or writes"

      Absolutely... and that's why I don't assume these articles have a shred of truth in them.
      For your information, I also research what I am interested in, not only by reading but also by visiting some of the places of interest. Real life is so much more rewarding than someone else's literary version of it.

      "If you think your intelligent remember to never assume anything. "

      Everyone assumes something at some point, even you... and I'll assume you meant to write 'you're' there.

    • 1 year ago
  • tommic
    • 0
      tommic  
    • IceKat:

      Assume what you wish, it does not change fact. If you choose your facts unwisely you become less intelligent. I am now done with you, I don't dance with morons. I don't assume a god damn thing in life, you assumed I did, another mistake. You'd be better off keeping your mouth shut and fingers off the keyboard until you do educate yourself. Respond as you will, you will recieve nothing back. I do not argue with those I deem unworthy. You have found that niche.

    • 1 year ago
  • IceKat
    • -2
      IceKat  
    • tommic:

      And so the name-calling begins.
      You're just upset that I don't see things from your slanted perspective and therefore you deem me to be uneducated and lack intelligence. I'm pleased you have decided not to continue with this discussion, you really didn't have anywhere else to go besides thinking up more derogatory terms with which to abuse me.
      Take care :)

    • 1 year ago
  • DogBoy
  • DogBoy
  • JanforGore
  • ayipis
  • IceKat
    • +1
      IceKat  

    • Here we go again, "We're 100 percent responsible for it."

      Another article that tells us everything was perfect before you came along, but fails to tell us in any detail what it is you've done to bugger things up.
      You're left having to take this at face value and just believe what you've read because the man who wrote it is a scientist, and when are scientists ever wrong?

      "Corals, big mammals and many tropical species could all go extinct in the not too distant future, predict scientists..."

      Of course they could. More likely, they won't!
      It's this use of the word 'could' again. This could happen... and it's all your fault. So many coulds that rarely materialise.
      Luckily there are far too many intelligent people on the earth to fall for this scaremongering rubbish.

      And notice how it's always a one-way street. Mass extinctions only, no balance, no new species, nothing. It's doom and gloom only.
      However, those of us in the real world can relish in the fact that there are new species being discovered.

      "Two unique species of shrimp that are adapted to the harsh conditions are among the animals that live at the erupting NW Rota-1 submarine volcano. "

      Imagine that, two new species of shrimp!

      And if new species aren't good enough (there are more examples) how about if the scientists got it wrong and discovered that not all the things they thought extinct were actually extinct.

      "A TREASURE trove of rare wildlife, including two species thought extinct, has been discovered on a Scottish former shooting estate." News.scotsman.com.

      In this instance a bee and a horsefly were re-discovered, and again, many other examples exist.

      Is it right that we take a snapshot of the planet, from any time, and label that as being the correct status of the earth, and one which must be preserved at all cost?

    • 1 year ago
  • UtopianSky
    • +1
      UtopianSky  
    • IceKat:

      I agree- extinction is a natural phenomenon, and we have no idea how many of these species would have gone extinct without any interference from humans.

      Plus, thanks to environmentalists, there are many species that would have gone extinct, but did not, BECAUSE of humans.

      What's important is if a single niche, like the pollinators or the amphibians, go extinct, not an individual species.

      No, I'm not defending pollution or deforestation- I'm saying complaining about the extinction of some two-spotted yellow tree snail is asinine, when there are plenty of other tree snails that are exactly the same, except with one spot or three spots, or different colors.

      Death is a part of life- we have to accept that.

      Plus, the last paragraph is important- even when the atmosphere was clouded with poisonous Oxygen, life continued. It evolved. It not only became able to survive in the oxygen-rich atmosphere, we became dependent on it.

      Life, in all of it's diversity, is much stronger than environmentalists think it is.

    • 1 year ago
  • DogBoy
  • DogBoy
  • DogBoy
    • 0
      DogBoy  
    • IceKat:

      A major international scientific study released in November 2006 in the journal Science found that about one-third of all fishing stocks worldwide have collapsed (with a collapse being defined as a decline to less than 10% of their maximum observed abundance), and that if current trends continue all fish stocks currently fished will collapse within fifty years. However, they also conclude that "available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible".[1][2]

    • 1 year ago
  • caverat101
  • EthicalVegan
  • idealist
  • IceKat
    • 0
      IceKat  
    • caverat101:

      Absolutely correct. It always amazes me why these people expect the world to remain exactly as it was in some mythical time when everything lived happily and the climate was perfect.

    • 1 year ago
  • EmperorThan
  • EmperorThan
  • Mick_J
    • +1
      Mick_J  
    • idealist:

      For information, huge amounts of natural seepage occur but difficult to gain good estimates due to limited monitoring of all potential locations, a Google search turns up many locations where this is happening. A couple of examples below.

      "Abstract
      Recent global estimates of crude-oil seepage rates suggest that about 47% of crude oil currently entering the marine environment is from natural seeps, whereas 53% results from leaks and spills during the extraction, transportation, refining, storage, and utilization of petroleum. The amount of natural crude-oil seepage is currently estimated to be 600,000 metric tons per year, with a range of uncertainty of 200,000 to 2,000,000 metric tons per year. Thus, natural oil seeps may be the single most important source of oil that enters the ocean, exceeding each of the various sources of crude oil that enters the ocean through its exploitation by humankind."

      http://www.springerlink.com/content/bya6g7r7ceebanrl/

      "While the amount of oil and its ultimate fate in such manmade disasters is well known, the effect and size of natural oil seeps on the ocean floor is murkier. A new study finds that the natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara, Calif., have leaked out the equivalent of about eight to 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills over hundreds of thousands of years.

      These spills create an oil fallout shadow that contaminates the sediments around the seep, with the oil content decreasing farther from the seep.

      There is effectively an oil spill every day at Coal Oil Point (COP), the natural seeps off Santa Barbara where 20 to 25 tons of oil have leaked from the seafloor each day for the last several hundred thousand years. The oil from natural seeps and from man-made spills are both formed from the decay of buried fossil remains that are transformed over millions of years through exposure to heat and pressure."

      http://www.livescience.com/environment/090520-natural-oil-seeps.html

    • 1 year ago
  • ThresholdBroken
  • EthicalVegan
  • idealist
  • UtopianSky
  • EthicalVegan
  • caverat101
    • 0
      caverat101  
    • EthicalVegan:

      there have been more than 5 mass extinctions in earths history. so keeping that, as well as the 99%..extinct statistic in mind: A. what makes you think that humans, along with our "genre" of species' that cover the earth today will be around forever? the earth will reboot again, and again,and again until the sun runs out or divine intervention. and B. we are having an impact on earth, but it is so minuscule when you stand it up next to everything its already been through. Getting upset at some spilled oil or animals dying off, is like freaking out over a grown man getting a paper cut.

    • 1 year ago
  • Kurta
    • +1
      Kurta  
    • caverat101:

      True, but we are smart enough to allow it not to happen. We've placed an unnatural strain on a fragile planet. Sure, extinctions happen all the time and they will always happen. Hell, the Permian extinction almost ended life on Earth. The main difference in the current extinction is that it is preventable. I am a firm believer that humans take the lion's share of responsiblity for it. We create things that the Earth cannot process. We take everything to extremes and do it in a very, very, short time frame in terms of geological time. You can dodge the issue and say that it's a fact of life that extinctions come and go and life will recover but if we, as humans, are so quick to marvel at our technological prowess, it seems irresponsible and ethically wrong to misuse that technology and fail to protect the only known planet like ours.

      The sobering fact is that once the food chain is broken, we are all in serious trouble. And there's plenty of evidence to suggest that time is just around the bend. The Earth simply cannot keep up with what we are throwing at it. I'll even be bold enough to say that failure to act, to me, is akin to being an accomplice to murder. Unacceptable.

      Maybe I'm crazy,but I refuse to shrug my shoulders about this. We all need to have a little humbleness.

    • 1 year ago
  • caverat101
    • -1
      caverat101  
    • Kurta:

      i am humble, that's why in this blink of an eye that we have existed, and destroyed so much, i wouldnt be surprised if the earth got rid of humans (mass extinction). George Carlin had a good point, since all these "pollutants" are made of things from earth, technically theres no such thing as an "artificial" or "unnatural" substance, so in other words humans and all our "creations" are spawn of the earth. with that in mind, maybe the earth only created humans so that we could create plastic, after all plastic is a product of the earth, and maybe the earth is fond of plastic. All i'm saying is we will die before the earth does, so dont worry about it.

    • 1 year ago
  • Kurta
    • 0
      Kurta  
    • caverat101:

      Well, plastic will eventually disappear. If the Earth can recycle it's crust, it can handle plastics. My point is: It shouldn't have to. And when I die, it won't matter what happens. But right now does matter and I prefer a healthy home.

    • 1 year ago
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