The Sumatran rhino is one of 515 endangered species of land animals on the brink of extinction. Mark Carwardine / Photolibrary / Getty Images
The sixth mass extinction is here, and it's speeding up.
<p>A new study, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/27/1922686117" target="_blank">published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday</a>, found that 515 land <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/animals/" target="_self">animals</a> are currently on the brink of extinction. That's slightly less than the at least 543 species that disappeared last century. However, these extremely <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/endangered-species" target="_self">endangered species</a> are expected to disappear in the next two decades, <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/press/view/34340" target="_blank">Stanford University explained in a press release</a>.</p><p>"When humanity exterminates populations and species of other creatures, it is sawing off the limb on which it is sitting, destroying working parts of our own life-support system," study coauthor and Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich said in the press release. "The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation" target="_self">conservation</a> of endangered species should be elevated to a national and global emergency for governments and institutions, equal to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate</a> disruption to which it is linked."</p>
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<p>Ehrlich helped to write a 2015 study confirming that a sixth mass extinction had begun, and he now says the extinction rate is likely higher than previously thought. Species are going extinct at rates hundreds or thousands of times faster than the "background" rate for the last tens of millions of years, and are being killed off by one overriding factor: us. Several specific human actions are behind these losses, including habitat loss, hunting, the introduction of invasive species, pollution, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" target="_self">wildlife</a> trade and the climate crisis.</p><p>"The massive losses that we are experiencing are being caused, directly or indirectly, by the activities of <em>Homo sapiens,</em>" the study authors wrote.</p>
<p>To draw their conclusions, the researchers looked at data on 29,400 land vertebrate species compiled by the <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/" target="_blank">IUCN Red List of Threatened Species</a> and <a href="https://www.birdlife.org/" target="_blank">BirdLife International</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/01/sixth-mass-extinction-of-wildlife-accelerating-scientists-warn?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco" target="_blank">The Guardian explained</a>. Of those species, 515 had populations of fewer than 1,000, and about half of the 515 were down to less than 250 individuals.</p><p>Most of the at-risk species live in the tropics or subtropics. They include the Sumatran rhino, the Clarión wren, the Española giant tortoise and the harlequin frog.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM2NjEyOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMTE4NDI1MX0.2WWSb0c89DNXcCCPJ1goB36-HAqJ3BcWogNMRMHbSL8/img.jpg?width=980" id="18b32" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0d1e4850694f3b468f7ee20744b33763" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Terrestrial vertebrates on the brink (i.e., with 1,000 or fewer individuals) include species such as (A) Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis; image credit: Rhett A. Butler [photographer]), (B) Clarion island wren (Troglodytes tanneri; image credit: Claudio Contreras Koob [photographer]), (C) Española Giant Tortoise (Chelonoidis hoodensis; image credit: G.C.), and (D) Harlequin frog (Atelopus varius; the population size of the species is unknown but it is estimated at less than 1,000; image credit: G.C.).
<p>Because ecosystems are so interconnected, the disappearance of any of these at-risk species would put other species at risk. For example, when sea otters were overhunted in the Bering Sea, the population of sea urchins bloomed, devouring kelp forests and driving the Steller's sea cow to extinction. Eighty-four percent of species with populations under 5,000 live in the same regions as species with populations under 1,000, making such a domino effect more likely.</p><p>"Extinction breeds extinction," the researchers wrote.</p>
<p>The eradication of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self">biodiversity</a> is also a major threat to human civilization. The most timely example is the spread of the new <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coronavirus" target="_self">coronavirus</a>, which originated in bats and is believed to have passed to humans through another animal at a wildlife market, the press release explained.</p><p>"Based on our research and what we're seeing, the extinction crisis is so bad that whatever we do in the next 10 to 50 years is what will define the future of humanity," study coauthor professor Gerardo Ceballos of the National University of Mexico in Mexico City told <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52881831" target="_blank">BBC News</a>.</p><p>The researchers called for a ban on the international wildlife trade, according to Stanford. They have also started an initiative called <a href="https://stopextinctions.org/" target="_blank">Stop Extinction</a> to raise awareness of the biodiversity crisis.</p><p>"In view of the current extinction crisis and the lack of widespread actions to halt it, it is very important that scientists should metaphorically take to the streets," they wrote.</p>
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The Ebo Forest in Cameroon, Africa, is a biodiversity hotspot, home to an amazing range of wildlife, including forest elephants, gorillas, drills, chimpanzees, grey parrots and the goliath frog. San Diego Zoo Global
By Lamfu Fabrice Yengong and Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue
Biodiversity loss is a global crisis. In May last year, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that over 1,000,000 species are threatened with extinction worldwide. On May 22, the International Day of Biodiversity, it is important to recall the silent victims of our country's obsession for industrial growth at the expense of our forests.
<p>Tropical rainforests are estimated to harbor more than half of the world's plant and animal species. They are also essential for access to water, regulating temperature and preventing soil erosion. It's time to return the forests to indigenous and local communities. </p><p>In our country, Cameroon, the conservation of biodiversity, global climate goals and human rights of indigenous and local communities are all put at stake for industrial exploitation of the rainforest, driven by short-sighted thinking. Biodiversity hotspots are put at risk by industrial logging and agriculture, as trees are cut for the tropical timber market and entire forests cleared to make room for oil palm and rubber plantations. The government tries to assure conservationists that some space will be reserved for the wildlife in the forest it trashes, but even protected areas are not truly safe. </p><p>Companies, usually foreign-owned, are rapidly destroying rainforests that have existed for years. Local communities are left poorer after their traditional source of livelihood is desecrated. The only ones getting rich are a small group of beneficiaries that are close to the circles of power. </p><p>Some low-income countries that are rich in forests are resorting to quick solutions like logging and industrial agriculture. But industrial logging concessions and rubber and palm oil plantations are never the job-creating mechanism they promise to be. That has been demonstrated over and over again in forest countries around the world.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/407/" target="_blank">the Dja Faunal Reserve</a>, a UNESCO world heritage site in the South of Cameroon, is home to more than 100 species of mammals, including at least 14 primates, such as the endangered western lowland gorilla, chimpanzee, and white-collared mangabey, as well as species such as the endangered forest elephant, and the African grey parrot, bongo antelope and leopard.</p><p>The Dja Faunal Reserve is adjacent to the Sudcam rubber plantation, mainly owned by rubber giant Halcyon Agri. Sudcam has cleared more than 10,000 hectares (approximately 25,000 acres) of dense tropical rainforest in the South region of Cameroon – an equivalent of 10 football pitches a day – to make way for a rubber plantation between 2011 and 2018. The rubber plantation has rattled the lives of several indigenous communities, namely the Baka, but it has also aggravated the lives of those numerous protected species in the Dja Reserve.</p><p>To indigenous and local forest dependent communities, the rainforest serves as a source of nutritious foods and traditional medicine, much of which science has yet to explore. The forest is also the foundation of their social life, from recreational to ritual practices. Furthermore, biodiversity loss itself is a direct and immediate threat to the livelihood of indigenous peoples like the Baka next to the Sudcam plantation.</p><p>Upon the arrival of rubber company Sudcam, the indigenous community has lost access to its forest and specifically to the animals and plants they rely on. As Sudcam gets richer, it leaves entire communities in impoverishment, abjectness and destitution. </p>
<p>That is the fate which the chiefs of the Banen people of the Littoral region in Cameroon are trying to avoid <a href="http://www.cameroon-info.net/article/cameroun-denonciation-le-peuple-banen-du-littoral-soppose-a-la-confiscation-de-ses-terres-371484.html" target="_blank">in their current struggle</a> against the destruction of large parts of the Ebo forest. </p><p>The <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/blog/ebo-forest-a-stronghold-for-cameroons-wildlife/" target="_blank">Ebo Forest</a> is a biodiversity hotspot, one of the intact forest ecosystems in the Gulf of Guinea, stretching over 2000 square kilometers (approximately 772 square miles). Ebo Forest is home to an amazing range of wildlife, including forest elephants, gorillas, drills, chimpanzees, grey parrots and the goliath frog – the largest living frog on the planet. Accordingly, it was designated over a decade ago by the Cameroon Government as a National Park. </p><p>However, on February 4, the same government of Cameroon authorized two logging concessions (<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P8O3pc1JeLaAnDF1ERXvRrIAzjnw09SG/view" target="_blank">UFA07005</a> and <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n2cgvavirDdYmApiTd5vLV0hQRova6Ed/view" target="_blank">UFA07006</a>) inside the area of Ebo Forest. The planned concessions are enormous – about the size of London. Again, the government of Cameroon wants to convince us that conservation can be done with chainsaws. </p><p>Biodiversity loss doesn't only mean our children would get to see some of the world's most marvelous creatures only in documentary films. The consequences are far greater and more tangible.</p>
<p>The extinction of forest elephants, for example, small relatives of African Savanna elephants, might also reduce the number of large trees that they support, trees that excel at storing carbon. In the Congo Basin forest, the disappearance of forest elephants might mean a loss of about three billion tons of carbon – equivalent to France's CO2 emissions over more than 25 years, according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/science/elephants-climate-change.html" target="_blank">New York Times article</a> on recent research published in the journal <em>Nature Geoscience.</em> </p><p>Cameroon's government has made public commitments to preserve and protect biodiversity. Positive declarations and ambitious plans may win applause and some international funding, but all eyes should be on implementation. <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/press/8593/we-were-told-not-to-go-into-the-forest-anymore-greenpeace-investigation-exposes-human-rights-violations-by-halcyon-agri/" target="_blank">Field investigations by Greenpeace Africa</a> and others clearly show how far we are from protecting biodiversity. </p><p>In Cameroon's government, as well as in the meeting rooms and corridors of development agencies, decision makers often hold outdated views. Too often we hear that only through rapid and massive removal of the rainforest in favor of large-scale logging and industrial agriculture plantations can the country emerge out of poverty. </p><p>Yet that model has repeatedly failed the people, as short-term high profits always remained accessible only to a small circle of beneficiaries. On the contrary, local communities who have lived in harmony with nature for many generations are likely to face poverty, abuse, hunger and alcoholism <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-sustainable-development-ravaged-the-congo-basin/" target="_blank">wherever</a> forests are suddenly destroyed. It is becoming increasingly clear that the best solution for both human rights and the planet is for forests to be managed by local communities. They do so much better than the industrial loggers or plantation owners. </p>
<p>The Cameroonian government needs to realize that trashing forests is not the way to make the economy grow. Rapid and intensive exploitation of nature has more far-reaching consequences than short-term economic growth. To prevent the extinction of fauna and flora species, indigenous communities that live among them need the rights to manage their forest.</p>
<p>Standing for biodiversity means communities should get the rights to manage their forests, instead of the corporations that destroy them. </p>
<p class=""><em>Lamfu Fabrice Yengong is a Congo Basin researcher. </em></p><p><em>Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue is a forest campaigner for Greenpeace Africa.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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A view of the Piton de la Fournaise crater. Malavika Vyawahare
By Malavika Vyawahare
Giant tortoises and flying foxes once roamed La Réunion, a volcanic island off the eastern coast of Africa. Then humans arrived and decided to stay. Within 150 years of their appearance, large fruit-eating animals like the giant tortoises (Cylindraspis indica) and flying foxes (Pteropus niger), a type of bat, were wiped off the face of La Réunion.
<p>This speck of land in the western Indian Ocean, an overseas department of France, was one of the last corners of the planet to be colonized by humans. It is also home to the Piton de la Fournaise, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It was recently in the throes of another eruption, having erupted almost 240 times since 1650.</p><p>The scars from these eruptions are <u><a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1365-2745.13359" target="_blank">now helping scientists uncover</a></u> the lasting effects of permanent human settlement on life on the island, including the loss of large-fruited trees like <em>Sideroxylon borbonicum</em>, known locally as <em>bois de fer de Bourbon</em>, and <em>Labourdonnaisia calophylloides</em>, or <em>bois de natte à petites feuilles</em>.</p><p>The fates of flora and fauna are linked. Animals and birds are important to plants; they help to disperse seeds, transporting them near and far. Which seeds and how far they get scattered depend on the kind of creatures that get their paws or beaks on the seeds. The largest fruit eater inhabiting the island today is the Réunion bulbul (<em>Hypsipetes borbonicus</em>), a bird a thousand times smaller than the now extinct giant tortoise. The bulbul can't feed on fruits that the tortoise could eat.</p><p>Not many would consider living in the shadow of an active volcano good fortune. For Sébastien Albert and his colleagues at the University of La Réunion, however, the frequency of eruptions at Piton de la Fournaise has proven providential. They recently published a paper in the <em>Journal of Ecology</em> describing the loss of large-fruited trees by creating a timeline over several centuries. Because the time of each eruption is known, it is possible to see how the plant community changed before and after human colonization.</p>
<p>Albert described the island as a "paradise" before humans established themselves there around the mid-17th century. The forests were dotted with towering trees that bore large, fleshy fruits enclosing chunky seeds. Seeds come in all sizes; the biggest in the world is the genitalia-shaped seed of the coco de mer (<em>Lodoicea maldivica</em>) found on Seychelles, an archipelago north of La Réunion. It can grow 30 centimeters (1 foot) across and weigh more than 15 kilograms (33 pounds). At the other end of the spectrum, some orchids produce seeds that are a fraction of a millimeter across, finer than a grain of sand.</p><p>The Réunion bulbul can only consume seeds smaller than 13 mm, or about half an inch. A larger species of bird native to La Réunion, the Mascarene parrot (<em>Mascarinus mascarin</em>), went extinct before the turn of the 19th century. So did the Réunion fruit pigeon (<em>Nesoenas duboisi</em>).</p><p>Throughout the Mascarenes — the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues (which is today part of Mauritius), and La Réunion — this is a familiar tale. The extinction of the dodo (<em>Raphus cucullatus</em>) in Mauritius is emblematic of creatures lost to human exploitation.</p>
<p>Overhunting, habitat loss and invasive predators contributed to the animals' disappearance. Giant tortoises were hunted by European sailors for their meat even before human habitation began. Their eggs fell prey to invasive species like pigs, cats and rats. Henri du Quesne, a French naval officer, wrote of the tortoises: "Their Flesh is very delicate; the Fat better than Butter or the best Oil, for all sorts of Sawces." Another account from 1671 noted that it was not possible to go six steps without coming upon one of these friendly giants. By 1800, they were all but gone.</p><p>The difficult part is linking their disappearance to impacts on tree diversity. "There is evidence for declines in large-seeded species that rely on large vertebrates for the dispersal of their seeds. Examples include Africa, Peru, and Brazil," said Elizabeth Wandrag, a plant ecologist at the University of New England, Australia, who was not involved in the study.</p><p>"It is not always possible to explicitly link the loss of large frugivores, and wholesale losses of species — many tree species that rely on large frugivores for dispersal are still present in forests that have lost those dispersers but have instead become more aggregated and/or show lower survival," Wandrag told Mongabay in an email.</p>
<p>Which is where the lava flows come in. Lava flow from a volcanic eruption is a major disturbance for any ecosystem; it tears through forests, burning everything in its path. It presents a kind of clean slate (literally) to see how plants recolonize. For existing forests, entangling the effects and even pinpointing the collapse of a species may not be as simple.</p><p>By studying how plant communities recovered after each eruption, the researchers realized that large-seeded species were not fully recovering because the fauna around them had changed since the previous eruption. "We analyzed 151 vegetation surveys on lava flows dated between 1401 AD and 1956 AD," the authors write in the paper. Tracking the changing vegetation over five centuries "has helped to pinpoint the important role that these lost animals played for these forests." The scientists say this is because when the animals that were best suited to disperse their seeds disappeared, the trees also started to fade away from the landscape.</p><p>"It was nice that the findings of this study mirrored some of those we have seen in our research on <u><a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1709584114" target="_blank">Guam</a></u> without frugivores, some tree species simply aren't colonizing newly disturbed locations," Wandrag said. "In this case, the much longer history of defaunation, long-term chronosequence of plant communities, and botanical records allowed the authors to link that pattern to the resulting adult tree community."</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/what-one-of-the-worlds-most-active-volcanoes-tells-us-about-missing-trees/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Giraffes in the Serengeti. Harvey Barrison / CC BY-SA 2.0
The United Nations wants to stop the sixth mass extinction.
<p>In a <a href="https://www.cbd.int/doc/c/efb0/1f84/a892b98d2982a829962b6371/wg2020-02-03-en.pdf" target="_blank">draft proposal</a> released Monday, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity proposed protecting 30 percent of the planet by 2030, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/14/world/un-biodiversity-draft-plan-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html" target="_blank">CNN reported</a>.</p><p>"If adopted, this target could achieve what our children have been calling on governments to do – listen to the science," explorer-in-residence at National Geographic Enric Sala told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/un-draft-plan-sets-2030-target-to-avert-earths-sixth-mass-extinction-aoe" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>. "If we are to stay below 1.5C (34.7F), prevent the extinction of 1 million species and the collapse of our life support system, we need to protect our intact wilderness, and ensure at least 30% of our land and oceans are protected by 2030."</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="150" scrolling="no" class="rm-shortcode twitter-embed-1216507109690441729" id="twitter-embed-1216507109690441729" lazy-loadable="true" src="/res/community/twitter_embed/?iframe_id=twitter-embed-1216507109690441729&created_ts=1578872871.0&screen_name=UNBiodiversity&text=JUST+RELEASED%E2%80%BC%EF%B8%8F+%27Zero+Draft%27+of+the+%23post2020+global+biodiversity+framework%0A%0AGet+your+first+look+at+the+text+that+w%E2%80%A6+https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F5zZI598CcE&id=1216507109690441729&name=UN+Biodiversity" frameborder="0" data-rm-shortcode-id="KJUANF1579008644"></iframe><p>The protection of vulnerable ecosystems is only one of a 20-part plan to address <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self">biodiversity</a> loss this decade, with the hope of enabling ecosystems to recover by 2050, CNN explained.</p><p>Other 2030 goals include:</p><ul><li>Reducing the introduction rate of invasive species by 50 percent and reducing their impact in 50 percent of the places they are already present</li><li>Reducing nutrient, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pesticides" target="_self">pesticide</a> and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastic-pollution" target="_self">plastic pollution</a> by at least 50 percent</li><li>Making sure the human use and trade of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" target="_self">wildlife</a> is sustainable and legal</li><li>Using nature-based solutions to mitigate and adapt to the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> to achieve 30 percent of the carbon-dioxide reductions required by the Paris agreement</li></ul><p>The draft is set to be adopted by world leaders at an October summit in Kunming, China, The Guardian explained. However, it follows a similar agreement reached in Aichi, Japan in 2010 that most countries failed to meet.</p>
<p>The draft comes a little more than six months after a UN study issued a dire warning about the state of the earth's biodiversity, finding <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/biodiversity-report-ignored-2638037822.html" target="_self">that one million species</a> could go extinct. The situation has been made even more urgent by the devastating wildfires in Australia, which have <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/australia-wildfire-deaths-2644394434.html" target="_self">killed more than one billion animals</a>, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/united-nations-draft-biodiversity-framework_n_5e1c8ecbc5b6da971d19f17d?ri18n=true" target="_blank">HuffPost pointed out</a>. Because of this, some environmental groups think the draft proposal does not go far enough.</p><p>"We are witnessing whole swaths of a continent burning ― devastating entire species before our eyes ― and the need for dramatic change could not be more blatant," Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, chief program officer at the <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/" target="_blank">Natural Resources Defense Council</a>, said in a statement reported by HuffPost. "To reverse the cataclysmic changes occurring in nature, countries around the globe must heed scientists, who warn that heading off this rapid decline will require transformative action."</p><p><a href="https://www.campaignfornature.org/" target="_blank">Campaign for Nature</a> Director Brian O'Donnell, meanwhile, told The Guardian that the draft was a good "first step."</p><p>"Much work remains to be done in the coming months to ensure that the rights of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous" target="_self">indigenous</a> people are advanced, and bold <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation" target="_self">conservation</a> and finance targets are included in the final agreement," he said.</p><p>One of the draft's 20 goals does call for promoting the "full and effective participation" of indigenous communities, as well as women and young people, in conservation decision making.</p>
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By Jessie Wingard
Scientists are hoping to impregnate the closely-related southern white rhino — the most abundant rhino sub-species in the world — using harvested eggs from the last two northern white rhino cows and frozen sperm collected from four rhino bulls before their deaths, an international science consortium said on Wednesday.
Turning Point in Assisted Reproduction
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMTEwMjIwNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzk4MzE1OH0.cZFBxyHWlM41-xBG29vcya2-SrijiiTBmqoiD8TtXHU/img.jpg?width=980" id="55b0c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f97abddd55647a65dbee0ab218b9a162" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /><p>Two northern white rhino in-vitro embryos were successfully created at Avantea Laboratories in Cremona, Italy.<br></p><p>"These are early embryos that have a very high potential to develop into a baby. [They] have now been put in liquid nitrogen. We have achieved a new life, a new hope for this species," Thomas Hildebrandt, project head at the Leibnitz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, a consortium partner in the project, told DW.</p><p>Researchers from Kenya, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Germany are still fine-tuning the implantation procedure before the embryos are transferred into a surrogate mother, but are hopeful a northern white rhino calf can be born via surrogacy within the next three years.</p>Mother's Bond
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMTEwMjIxMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMTc0NTIxMn0.IbxmY18zxG1S2Ylqdu-Pcem16cgWPSxK25c_SL_cFFo/img.jpg?width=980" id="307e3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6262cbf66a1bd68ffa0cbee91578d119" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /><p>The remaining two cows, mother Najin and daughter Fatu, live in a Kenyan sanctuary. The last bull, Fatu's father, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/swipe-right-to-save-the-rhino/a-38966632" target="_blank">Sudan</a>, died in March, 2018.</p><p>Genetic reasons mean neither cow can breed.</p><p>While Najin and Fatu might not be able to carry the baby, the offspring would still be reliant on them "to pass on their knowledge of how a northern white rhino behaves with their offspring," Hildebrandt added.</p><p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/researchers-create-northern-white-rhino-embryos-to-save-species/a-50380291" target="_blank">DW</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Mass Extinction Event 2 Billion Years Ago Killed 99% of Life on Earth, Study Finds
04 September 2019
Science
This photo shows rocks from the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay, Canada, from which Malcolm Hodgskiss collected barite samples dating 2.02 to 1.87 billion years old. Malcolm Hodgskiss
Some two billion years ago, a significant decline of once-abundant oxygen killed as much as 99 percent of all life on Earth in a mass extinction event larger than the one responsible for the dinosaur die-off.
<p>Publishing their work in <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/35/17207" target="_blank">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>, a team of researchers describe the catalyst of the Great Oxidation Event (<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130117084856.htm" target="_blank">GOE</a>) that occurred between 2.05 and 2.4 billion years ago. In the years leading up to the GOE, oxygen levels in the Earth's atmosphere had increased significantly, resulting in the multiplication of ancient minuscule microorganisms. Suddenly, oxygen levels plummeted in what soon became one of the "most transformative events in all of Earth's history," shifting from "feast" to "famine" conditions that followed in the next 1 billion years, paving the way for complex life as we know it today.</p><p>"We were very surprised," co-author Peter Crockford, a postdoctoral researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Princeton University told <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/earth-massive-die-off-dinosaur-extinction-1457228" target="_blank">Newsweek</a>. "We didn't expect to see such a large signal, nor did we expect to find it in this specific type of sample.</p><p>"Over the 100 to 200 million years before this die-off event there was a large amount of life on the planet, but after this event a huge portion died off," said Crockford. "However, instead of recovering like more recent mass extinctions, the amount of life on the planet or size of the biosphere stayed small for the following billion years of Earth's history—about two billion to one billion years ago."</p><p>But how or why that shift occurred has long been contested — until now. </p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMTA3OTI2NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5NDY3NDQ5Mn0.BosmWfyY-Y-m_ekWQXgZUgdL7bqOYO1Wv3knyhmMEyc/img.jpg?width=980" id="afbd1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c2d2edd3d4b4ef1d8405ebd3d0980b05" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Barite crystals in the Costello Formation in Canada. Malcolm Hodgskiss
<p>Scientists turned to <a href="https://geology.com/minerals/barite.shtml" target="_blank">barite</a>, a sulfate mineral found in the Belcher Islands in Canada's Hudson Bay that shows the geological record of oxygen in the atmosphere. An analysis of isotope geochemistry found negative values that occurred shortly after the GEO, implying a collapse in primary productivity that triggered a shift in the availability of nutrients like phosphorus. Altogether, this caused an enormous drop in life perhaps due to a decrease in oxygen levels.</p><p>"The fact that this geochemical signature was preserved was very surprising," <a href="https://earth.stanford.edu/news/ancient-die-greater-dinosaur-extinction#gs.0rfimc" target="_blank">said</a> study co-author Malcolm Hodgskiss. "What was especially unusual about these barites is that they clearly had a complex history."</p><p>The increase of life in correlation with atmospheric oxygen confirms a theory known as "oxygen overshoot" whereby photosynthesis from ancient microorganisms and the natural weathering processes of rocks resulted in an increase of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen-emitting organisms eventually exhausted their nutrient supply in the ocean, resulting in declining populations in a world much different than how we know it today, where a stable atmosphere balances oxygen production with consumption. </p><p>The findings shed light into ancient processes that eventually resulted in Earth as we know it today. By further studying how Earth behaves throughout time, scientists say they can better understand how atmospheres operate on planets outside of our solar system, specifically the interlink between the biosphere (where organisms live) and how that relates to levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. </p><p>"Some of these oxygen estimates likely require too many microorganisms living in the ocean in Earth's past," said Crockford. "So, we can now start to narrow in on what the composition of the atmosphere could have been through this biological angle."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Kokia drynarioides, commonly known as Hawaiian tree cotton, is a critically endangered species of flowering plant that is endemic to the Big Island of Hawaii. David Eickhoff / Wikipedia
By Lorraine Chow
Kokia drynarioides is a small but significant flowering tree endemic to Hawaii's dry forests. Native Hawaiians used its large, scarlet flowers to make lei. Its sap was used as dye for ropes and nets. Its bark was used medicinally to treat thrush.
But <em>Kokia drynarioides </em>— commonly known as Hawaii tree cotton, or <em>kokio</em> and <em>hau hele'ula</em> in Hawaiian — is also one of the loneliest plants on Earth. After more than a century of overgrazing from non-native animals, competition from weeds, wildfires and <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/ecoregions/oc0202" target="_blank">widespread habitat loss</a>, these days, you can count with two hands the number of wild kokios that still remain.
<div id="94405" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="OB41551576661604"><blockquote class="instagram-media"
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/By4GDxBDJ5T/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif;
font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;
word-wrap:break-word;" target="_top">Francis Joy on Instagram: “#hauheleula #kokio #kokia #kokiadrynarioides #malvaceae #hawaiiendemics #endangeredspecies #floraandfaunaofhawaii #nativehawaiianplants…”</a></p>
</div></blockquote></div><p>"In the early 1900s, Joseph Rock, a famous botanist who worked in Hawaii, said kokios were in no threat of extinction because of cattle and other ungulates," Josh VanDeMark, a Hawaiian plant expert, told Truthout. "By the 1980s, the population dropped down to only a couple dozen individuals. Today, there are only seven mature individuals known that are wild."<br></p><p>Certainly, in a state dubbed the "extinction capital of the world," the Plant Extinction Prevention Program's (PEPP) mission feels Sisyphean. Due to its long history of extreme isolation and climatic conditions, Hawaii is home to some of the richest varieties of flora and fauna on Earth. But the arrival of humans and rapid development exposed indigenous species to predators, diseases and invasive species of which they were not evolved to withstand. Hawaii now claims <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y2qhdq23" target="_blank">44 percent</a> of the total endangered and threatened plant species in the U.S.</p><p>What's more, PEPP's $1.1 million-a-year budget has been supported by state and federal funds and grants, as well as public and private donations. But this year, due to the "current challenging fiscal climate," the program is operating on a shoestring budget reflecting "70 percent funding reduction," the group states on its <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y5tpfnxo" target="_blank">website</a>.</p>
<p>"Those kinds of things can set us back. We're still going even though we lost a lot of our funding over the past couple of years. We're still going, but at a reduced capacity," VanDeMark said. "But for some of these species, they just don't have the time. They need 10 times the resources that are available and they need it right now."</p><p>It goes without saying that we need plants. Plant ecologist Doria Gordon, a lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and a conservationist for the last 30 years, helped list many of the reasons why: They provide food, clothing, shelter, medicine and oxygen. They host and nourish a vast number of species, such as insects, birds, mammals, fungi and lichens. Their roots are central to soil health, control erosion and improve water quality. Through photosynthesis, plants absorb the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere, making them a natural and crucial carbon sink. Their beauty supports our economy and nurtures our well-being. They inspire, they give life, and so much more.</p><p>"So it means that they are really vital for everything we do, for everything in our lives," Gordon said. "And even though animals are more charismatic and get more attention from the public, if we don't pay attention to the plants, we won't survive."</p><p>Not only that, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12595" target="_blank">four out of five Americans</a> support the goals of the <a href="https://www.fws.gov/international/laws-treaties-agreements/us-conservation-laws/endangered-species-act.html" target="_blank">U.S. Endangered Species Act</a>, which is aimed at preventing the extinction of imperiled plants and animals. This amount of support has not wavered for the last two decades.</p><p>Yet, a lot of Earth's flora is at risk of vanishing completely. More than 20 percent of the world's known plant species, or one in five, are threatened with extinction, <a href="https://stateoftheworldsplants.org/2016/" target="_blank">a 2016 study</a> by experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London found.</p><p>Gordon, who was not involved in the study, said that unless we take dramatic action, that figure is "unlikely to improve" due to the continued stresses that all of the world's species, including humans, are facing.</p>
<p>Some of the biggest threats identified in the Kew study include <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/globalized-monoculture-is-consuming-the-planet-an-interview-with-helena-norberg-hodge/" target="_blank">agricultural destruction</a> (such as livestock farming and palm oil production); biological resource use (logging, gathering terrestrial plants); residential and commercial development; and invasive and problematic species. Climate change is also a growing threat.</p><p>"We're only slowly learning both the potential scope and the degree of threat [of climate change], but there are changes we can see now," Gordon said. For instance, she said, extreme events in temperature and precipitation are pushing the environmental tolerance of plants.</p><p>"We were seeing daffodils starting to come up in the D.C. area, and then, of course, we had massive snow and sleet [in February]," Gordon explained. Sudden weather changes not only harm the sensitive tissue of the daffodils, but over the long term, this disruption could also throw pollinators out of sync with the flowers they pollinate, which can then impact plant populations.</p><p>So, what can be done? Importantly, we must urge our representatives and lawmakers to protect threatened and endangered plants from extinction by defending and strengthening the Endangered Species Act.</p><p>Take <em>Kokia drynarioides</em>, the lonely Hawaiian tree. Although it has lost most of its former habitat, because it is <a href="https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp0/profile/speciesProfile?sId=4718" target="_blank">federally listed as endangered</a>, "a fair amount of work" has been done to plant the tree in protected areas, according to VanDeMark.</p><p>You can also advocate, donate and volunteer with conservation programs to help endangered plant species survive. We also need to support private and public landowners who are protecting swaths of native plant habitat and ensure those lands are properly maintained, Gordon advised.</p>
<p><br>"At the same time, obviously, climate change is a big looming specter," she added. "We all have individual roles to play, and [we should] encourage our elected officials to follow policies that reduce emissions."</p><p>Plants are all around us, so we often take them for granted or tend to forget about their importance. But for the thousands of species at risk of extinction, we must act now before they're gone forever.</p><p>"We're always asking ourselves: 'Why are we even trying?'" VanDeMark joked.</p><p>But for the PEPP team, the cause is simply much greater than themselves. "To me, a lot of these plants are very important culturally, and they're a part of the story of this place. These plants were here for millions of years before any humans arrived in Hawaii," VanDeMark said. "Just like any other place in the world has a unique story of their own plants and animals. Personally, I feel those stories are more important to humans than we fully appreciate."</p>
<p><em><em>Note: </em><em>In July, then-statewide PEPP Manager Joan Yoshioka told</em> Truthout <em>that PEPP will be further integrated into the state system by district as a cost-saving measure. Yoshioka, who stepped down from her role as manager on August 1 as a result of this transition, said in an email that "the state will take on more of the management responsibilities of the program with a medium-term commitment to make PEPP a fully funded state program."</em></em></p><p><em>Lorraine Chow is a freelance environmental journalist based in South Carolina.</em><br/></p><em>This article first appeared on <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/we-ignore-thousands-of-threatened-plant-species-at-our-own-peril/" target="_blank">Truthout</a> and was produced in partnership with <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/earth-food-life/" target="_blank">Earth | Food | Life</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</em>From Your Site Articles
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Study urges conservation push for critically endangered black rhinos. CC0 1.0
With the consequences of human activities pushing Earth into a sixth mass extinction, a team of biologists have calculated that plant and animal species are being wiped out so quickly that evolution cannot keep up.
Human activities—including pollution, deforestation, overpopulation, poaching, warming oceans and extreme weather events tied to climate change—are predicted to drive so many mammals to extinction in the next five decades that nature will need somewhere between 3 to 7 million years to restore biodiversity levels to where it was before modern humans evolved, according to an alarming new analysis published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
<p>
The study's authors, who hail from Aarhus University in Denmark and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, are urging drastic conservation efforts.
</p><p>
"It is much easier to save biodiversity now than to re-evolve it later," lead author Matt Davis of Aarhus University said in a
<a href="https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/au-mce101118.php" target="_blank">press release</a>.
</p><p>
For the study, the researchers combed through an extensive database of mammals that includes existing species and species that lived in the recent past but have gone extinct since the rise of Homo sapiens. They determined that in the 130,000 years that humans have wandered the planet, we've erased 2.5 billion years-worth of evolutionary development by driving 300 million different mammal species to extinction.
</p><p>
When certain species die off, much of its "phylogenetic diversity" disappears, too. For instance, as Davis explained to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/15/humanity-is-cutting-down-the-tree-of-life-warn-scientists" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, losing a few species of shrew is not as devastating as losing elephants. Losing elephants is akin to "chopping a large branch off the tree of life … whereas losing a shrew species would be like trimming off a small twig."
</p><p>
Davis further noted in the press release:
</p><blockquote>
"Large mammals, or megafauna, such as giant sloths and saber-toothed tigers, which became extinct about 10,000 years ago, were highly evolutionarily distinct. Since they had few close relatives, their extinctions meant that entire branches of Earth's evolutionary tree were chopped off. There are hundreds of species of shrew, so they can weather a few extinctions. There were only four species of saber-toothed tiger; they all went extinct."
</blockquote><p>
Worryingly, some of today's most iconic megafauna are facing increasing rates of extinction, the press release warns. Black rhinos are at high risk of becoming extinct within the next 50 years. Asian elephants have less than a 33 percent chance of lasting beyond this century.
</p><p>
"Although we once lived in a world of giants: giant beavers, giant armadillos, giant deer, etc., we now live in a world that is becoming increasingly impoverished of large wild mammalian species. The few remaining giants, such as rhinos and elephants, are in danger of being wiped out very rapidly," said Jens-Christian Svenning from Aarhus University in the press release.
</p><p>
Saving animals with the long evolutionary histories—including the black rhino, the red panda and the indri lemur—should thus be prioritized.
</p><p>
"This highlights species we should try to save and could help us prioritize conservation," Davis told The Guardian.
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Artist impression of the largest bird that ever lived. Jaime Chirinos / Zoological Society of London
The largest bird that ever stalked Earth's surface is officially the "Vorombe titan," a previously unidentified species of elephant bird that once roamed the island of Madagascar.
Literally meaning "big bird" in Malagasy and Greek, the giant creature could weigh more than 1,700 pounds and stood nearly 10 feet tall, a new study published Wednesday in Royal Society Open Science has revealed.
<p>
"They would have towered over people," James Hansford, the study's lead author and a paleontologist at the
<a href="https://www.zsl.org/" target="_blank">Zoological Society of London</a> (ZSL), told <a href="https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/ending-decades-doubt-biggest-bird-dispute-put-nest-doc-19f3q92" target="_blank">Agence France Presse</a>. "They definitely couldn't fly as they couldn't have supported anywhere near their weight."
</p><p>
One such specimen weighed about 1,895 pounds, roughly the same as an adult giraffe, AFP noted.
</p><p>
Elephant birds stomped across Madagascar for 60 million years until they were hunted to extinction around 1,000 years ago, AFP wrote.
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The title of "world's largest bird" has been at the center of rigorous study and debate for decades. But after analyzing hundreds of elephant bird bones from museums around the world, ZSL researchers found convincing evidence that the Vorombe titan was actually the largest, taking the title away from the previous record-holder, Aepyornis maximus.
</p><p>
The researchers also gave the first taxonomic reassessment of the elephant bird family in more than 80 years. They discovered there were actually three genera of elephant birds rather than two, and four distinct species rather than 15, per <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/science/largest-elephant-bird.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesscience" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.
</p><p>
"Elephant birds were the biggest of Madagascar's megafauna and arguably one of the most important in the [island's] evolutionary history—even more so than lemurs," Hansford said in a
<a href="https://www.zsl.org/science/news/zsl-names-world%E2%80%99s-largest-ever-bird-%E2%80%93-vorombe-titan" target="_blank">press release</a>. "This is because large-bodied animals have an enormous impact on the wider ecosystem they live in via controlling vegetation through eating plants, spreading biomass and dispersing seeds through defecation. Madagascar is still suffering the effects of the extinction of these birds today."
</p><p>
<span></span>The authors of the new paper say their work can help conservation efforts in Madagascar, which is home to several <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/are-lemurs-endangered-2592379111.html">critically threatened species</a>.
</p><p>
"Without an accurate understanding of past species diversity, we can't properly understand evolution or ecology in unique island systems such as Madagascar or reconstruct exactly what's been lost since human arrival on these islands," co-author Samuel Turvey from ZSL's Institute of Zoology said in the press release. "Knowing the history of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity">biodiversity</a> loss is essential to determine how to conserve today's threatened species."
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Sudan, the world's last male northern white rhino. Ol Pejeta Conservancy
The world's last male northern white rhino has died, leaving only two females left to save the subspecies from extinction, the wildlife conservancy taking care of him announced Tuesday.
The 45-year-old rhinoceros, named Sudan, was euthanized Monday at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.
<p>
He was being treated for age-related complications that led to degenerative changes in his muscles and bones and also gave him extensive skin wounds.
</p><p>
"His condition worsened significantly in the last 24 hours; he was unable to stand up and was suffering a great deal," Ol Pejeta said in a
<a href="http://www.olpejetaconservancy.org/the-last-male-northern-white-rhino-dies/" target="_blank">statement</a>. "The veterinary team from the Dvůr Králové Zoo, Ol Pejeta and Kenya Wildlife Service made the decision to euthanize him."
</p><p>
Sudan previously lived at the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic before being moved to Ol Pejeta Conservancy in 2009.
</p><p>
"During his final years, Sudan came back to Africa and stole the heart of many with his dignity and strength," the conservancy said.
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<span></span>"Sudan will be remembered for his unusually memorable life. In the 1970s, he escaped extinction of his kind in the wild when he was moved to Dvůr Králové Zoo," the conservancy said. "Throughout his existence, he significantly contributed to survival of his species as he sired two females."
</p><p style="">
Sudan lived at Ol Pejeta with his daughter and granddaughter—the last two females of the same species—27-year-old Najin and 17-year-old Fatu.
</p><p style="">
"The only hope for the preservation of this subspecies now lies in developing in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques," the conservancy said.</p><p style="">
Ol Pejeta, Dvůr Králové Zoo and its partners at ZW Berlin, Avantea Cremona and the Kenya Wildlife Service will "try and conduct the first-ever procedure to safely remove egg cells from remaining females, fertilize these with semen previously collected from northern white males, and insert the resulting embryos into female southern white rhinos acting as surrogates," the conservancy said.
</p><p>
This procedure has never been done before in rhinos and does not come without risks, Ol Pejeta noted. The estimated cost of IVF—from development of the method, to trials, implantation and the creation of a viable breeding herd of northern whites—could be as much as $9 million.
</p><p>
"Sudan was the last northern white rhino that was born in the wild. His death is a cruel symbol of human disregard for nature and it saddened everyone who knew him. But we should not give up. We must take advantage of the unique situation in which cellular technologies are utilized for conservation of critically endangered species," said Jan Stejskal, director of international projects at Dvůr Králové Zoo.
</p><p>
"It may sound unbelievable, but thanks to the newly developed techniques even Sudan could still have an offspring. We will be happy for everyone who will
<a href="https://donate.olpejetaconservancy.org/projects/sudan" target="_blank">help us in our joint effort</a>."
</p><p>
<span></span>The northern white rhino <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/with-only-3-northern-white-rhinos-left-in-the-world-scientists-are-tur-1891164475.html">originally ranged</a> in vast numbers in East and Central Africa but habitat loss, conflict and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/poaching">poaching</a> the animals for their prized horns has pushed their population to the brink of extinction. By the mid-2003 there were only 32 of the animals left in the wild. Now, with Sudan's passing, only two remain.
</p><p>
Richard Vigne, Ol Pejeta's CEO said the conservancy is saddened by Sudan's death.
</p><p>
"He was a great ambassador for his species and will be remembered for the work he did to raise awareness globally of the plight facing not only rhinos, but also the many thousands of other species facing extinction as a result of unsustainable human activity," Vigne said. "One day, his demise will hopefully be seen as a seminal moment for conservationists worldwide."
</p><p>
Rhino populations around the world are <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/rhino" target="_blank">at a fraction</a> of the estimated 100,000 that used to roam Earth in the early 20th century.
</p><p>
Tributes around the world have since poured in. Bindi Irwin, conservationist and daughter of the late Steve Irwin, said Sudan's death was a "heartbreaking" loss.
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"Now, more than ever, we must stand together and protect our rhinos," she added.
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The Day a Comet Set the Earth on Fire: Scientists Find Evidence in Ancient Ice Cores
20 February 2018
Climate
A comet may have brought the mammoths to extinction. Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta / Dave Smith / Flickr
By Tim Radford
Think of it as the day a comet set the earth on fire. Researchers have evidence of widespread and devastating forest fires around half the world—a blaze to blot out the light of the sun—and all of it at a geological boundary called the Younger Dryas, 13,500 years ago.
The evidence, they say, supports the hypothesis that planet Earth sailed through a cloud of shattered cometary dust and stones, and the atmospheric violence that followed was enough to set light to accumulated forest timber, peat and grasses across the Americas, Europe and western Asia.
<p>The conflagration triggered dramatic <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a> and may have contributed not just to the decline of the mammoth and the mastodon and other Ice Age giants, but may have ended the Clovis civilization—which <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-clovis-point-and-the-discovery-of-americas-first-culture-3825828/" target="_blank">takes its name from the discovery of distinctive spearpoints</a> in Clovis, New Mexico—of early North America.</p><p>The evidence comes in two papers in the <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/695703" target="_blank">Journal of Geology</a>, which catalogue vast quantities of soot and ash, all of the same timeline, preserved in ice cores, ancient glaciers, lake beds, ocean muds and rock sediments.</p><p>Scientists also found evidence of ammonium, nitrate, acetate, oxalate and other aerosols linked to the combustion of plant material. The link between the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires">fires</a> across a whole hemisphere and cometary impact comes from separate finds at the same horizon, of melt glass, microscopic diamonds, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44031" target="_blank">platinum dust and other debris</a> that could be explained by a smash hit from outer space.</p><p>The big impact theory of mass extinction is now almost 40 years old: in 1980, U.S. researchers found a telltale concentration of the element iridium—rare on Earth, more often found in asteroids—at the boundary of the Cretaceous and the Tertiary Periods 65 million years ago, and <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/208/4448/1095" target="_blank">linked a giant impact to the end of the dinosaurs</a>.</p><p>That there was a cosmic collision at the end of the Cretaceous is now widely accepted. Palaeontologists still argue about what actually killed the dinosaurs. But the planet is in a free-fire zone, and must have been hit many times by heavenly projectiles.</p><p>For years, researchers have tried to match the extinction of Ice Age megafauna—woolly mammoths in North America, oversized marsupials in Australia and so on—with either climate change, or the arrival of human hunters, or some agency from outer space.</p><p><strong>Evidence From Smoke</strong></p><p>Now researchers think the discovery of smoke in ancient ice cores and other places must point to a smoking gun.</p><p>"The biomass burning was so extensive and voluminous—we have evidence of it over North America, South America, Western Europe and the western part of Asia—that it blocked out the sun, causing an impact winter, with profound effects on life on Earth, particularly large animals and humans," said <a href="http://www.geol.ucsb.edu/faculty/kennett/index.php" target="_blank">James Kennett, a professor emeritus</a> at the University of California Santa Barbara.</p><p>"The impact winter itself was also part of what triggered the Younger Dryas cooling in the Northern Hemisphere."</p><p>Arguments of this kind are closely linked to concern with climate change as a consequence of profligate combustion of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels">fossil fuels</a> by humankind, with a sharp build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to raise planetary temperatures with <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/emissions-could-make-earth-uninhabitable/" target="_blank">potentially calamitous consequences</a>.</p><p>To make sense of what is happening now, climate scientists have for decades been carefully analying climate change in the past: none of it linked to human action, but most of it linked to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.</p><p><strong>Debate Persists</strong></p><p>To do this, they have carefully reconstructed climate history from evidence in the rocks, ice cores, marine sediments and lake beds—and then tried to identify the bygone agents of change.</p><p>And although the cometary impact theory has its supporters—and asteroids and comets have been adding to the earth's minerals throughout the last 4.5 billion years—the debate is likely to go on.</p><p>Palaeontologists and climate scientists <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/99/23/14624.full" target="_blank">continue to argue</a> about <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/01/what-killed-great-beasts-north-america" target="_blank">the disappearance of the great Ice Age species</a>, about the role of human hunter-gatherers in any mass extinction, and about the levels of damage <a href="https://www.livescience.com/27565-did-comet-kill-clovis-culture.html" target="_blank">any cosmic collision may have caused</a>.</p><p>The latest studies add to the body of evidence: they tell a story of a blaze so vast and widespread it consumed almost one-tenth of the planet's biomass, over an area of 10 million square kilometers (approximately 3.9 million square miles), in a matter of weeks. It helps that a mix of corroborative testimony comes from a variety of sources.</p><p>"The ice cores are the most persuasive because they are so well dated," said Kennett. "What's more, they provide sound geochemical results that point to a large biomass burning event precisely coinciding with the Younger Dryas Boundary layer formed when this major comet impacted Earth."</p>
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<p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/23872-2/" target="_blank">Climate News Network</a>.</em></p>
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