Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction arrived? | COSMOS magazine

Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction arrived? | COSMOS magazine: "PARIS: Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction in Earth's history, given the known species losses over the past few centuries and millennia, palaeobiologists have reported.

Over the past 540 million years, five mega-wipeouts of species have occurred through naturally-induced events. But the new threat is man-made, inflicted by habitation loss, over-hunting, over-fishing, the spread of germs and viruses and introduced species and by climate change caused by fossil-fuel greenhouse gases, says the study.

'It looks like modern extinction rates resemble mass extinction rates, even after setting a high bar for defining 'mass extinction’,” said researcher Anthony Barnosky from the University of California at Berkeley."