Study reveals that the seventh mass extinction on Earth has begun

What do scientists mean by mass extinction? World’s End? The death of all species? A recent study revealed that the seventh mass extinction on Earth has begunwhich has generated anxiety in some sectors.

According to World Wild Life, Mass extinctions are events that occur in a short period of geological time in which a high percentage of biodiversity disappears.such as different species of bacteria, fungi, plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, among others.

There are several reasons that point to the fact that we are in the midst of a seventh extinction, mainly global warming. The problem is that, as issues such as carbon footprints become more widespread, it is increasingly difficult for experts to predict when the worst consequences will occur.

Timeline of mass extinctions

As a report published on the website of teach me about sciencesome experts believe that the last mass extinction was dated 65.5 million years ago and ended the existence of the dinosaurs and that, currently, another one could be living, which would be the sixth.

Previous records pointed to the origin of five mass extinctions on Earth, however, a group of researchers from the University of California Riverside (UCR) and Virginia Tech found evidence of major changes in the planet’s environmental conditions that show that, in reality , there was an older population decline.

In a document published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report that “a similar extinction occurred 550 million years ago, during the Ediacaran period.”.

Scientists consider it a mass extinction for the percentage of organisms lost, similar to other events, considering environmental changes responsible for the loss of about 80 percent of all Ediacaran creatures, which were the first complex multicellular life forms of the planet. planet.

Chenyi Tu, a paleoecologist and co-author of the study, argued: “Geological records show that the world’s oceans lost a great deal of oxygen during that time, and the few species that survived had bodies adapted for less-oxygen environments.”.