When people hear the word extinction, they think of the word that they have been hearing since they were small toddlers. When this word is heard most refer to the dinosaurs becoming extinct. In the book the sixth extinction it mentions how…
This can of course only be propagated by completely ignoring volumes of geological and paleontological evidence showing clearly that these creatures were destroyed in a natural cataclysm. Deloria reviews some of this evidence, as well as some of the evidence of Native American tradition, which described this catastrophe in some detail. In fact, native traditions from all over the world, as Ignatius Donnelly and Immanuel Velikovsky observed, tell much of the same story. People like Paul Martin however, studiously ignore this material. It may be noted that the scholarly consensus is now moving decisively away from Martin and his "overkill" theory in favor of Deloria's catastrophe. One of the most recent books on the topic, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes, provides a comprehensive overview of the latest scientific findings, such as the iridium layer at the termination of the Pleistocene, which speaks conclusively of a cataclysm. I wish that Deloria was alive to see such a positive…
There were many different theories that arose in regards to how dinosaurs became extinct. Some of the theories are floods, ice ages, poisoned food supply, etc. However, what most likely happened was a meteor crashing into the planet. The meteor caused an immediate impact on the life that it hit directly, causing them to vanish. The after effects were a drastic climate change and the fact that the meteor most likely caused a sonic boom that also ended the lives of many other animals. After the meteor hit, it probably caused volcanoes and made much of the land uninhabitable due to wild fires. Additionally, after this period of heat there was chance of a period of cold and dark. Together, this all combined was the reasoning behind why the dinosaurs, and most life went extinct, despite being in their prime and the most diverse they had ever…
Paleozoic seas were dominated by crinoid echinoderms. The Permian extinction, 244 million years ago, devastated the marine biota. Tabulate and rugose corals, blastoid echinoderms, graptolites, and most crinoids died out, as did the last of the trilobites. Articulate brachiopods and one lineage of crinoids survived, but never again dominated the marine environment. All modern crinoids have evolved from this lineage.…
Elizabeth Kolbert wrote The Sixth Extinction as an attempt to explain and give examples of what seems to be a 6th extinction event currently happening in the modern world. We have discussed and learned about five other extinction events throughout this semester, and Kolbert pushes this 6th extinction event as a new rapid extinction predominantly caused by humans. One of the underlying causes of this 6th extinction event discussed in the book is the mass killing of both animals and humans. Another underlying cause of this extinction event discussed in the book, which is probably more prevalent now than ever before, is climate change caused by humans. This book goes chapter by chapter giving examples of various species that are on the verge of going…
Dinosaurs roamed the Earth 230 million years ago. They were on this planet for over 160 million years. During this time, there were three different time sections for the dinosaurs. There was the Triassic period, Jurassic period, and the Cretaceous period. The Cretaceous was the last period and they became extinct in this time period. Not all dinosaurs became extinct; they have ancestors in today 's the world. The ones that did not survive, no one has a clue how they died out. There is speculation on how they died out, from ice bergs moving and flooding the planet or tar pits. Guess this is something that no one will know for a while.…
* The world has experienced 5 major extinctions during the past 500 million years and we are currently in another…
When did the largest extinction of life ( >90%) occur and what do researchers think caused it?…
-Mass extinction: a crisis that affects life right across the planet from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains…
However, no one hypothesis has been solely conclusive. In fact, hypotheses such as the Siberian volcanism, carbon isotope fluctuations and methane production all seem to be linked. The belief that Siberian volcanism was the main trigger for the extinction event seems to be the most valid since it also accounts for release of the CO2 and methane put forth by some researchers. The hypothesis that fluctuations in the carbon cycle and the subsequent release of methane is another hypothesis that has strong evidence in its favor. The hypotheses on sea fluctuations and bolide impact seem to be the least supported due to lack of evidence. However, out of all the proposed hypotheses, a bolide impact is the only one that would explain mass extinction both on land and n water. Whatever the cause of the mass extinction event, it is clear that almost all of life on earth was obliterated, with marine life suffering the greatest lost. While some of the individual hypotheses have to be re-examined to test their validity, I think future studies in this field should look at combining the most supported hypotheses and see how they were linked. Outstanding questions in this field include: (i) Did extinction in the marine and terrestrial environments occur at the same time? (ii) Did the mass extinction occur simultaneously across the entire planet? And (iii) Are the proposed hypotheses exactly synchronous with the extinction event? (Bowring et al.…
Four of the five past mass extinction events are related with warm greenhouse phases. During the End-Permian extinction event, the largest of all mass extinctions, 95 percent of animal and plant species were destroyed, which occurred through one of the warmest-ever climate phases. If global warming increases, which is very likely, our planet could have extreme threats against our species.…
The spread of humans especially impacted the wildlife in the areas such as the Americas and Australia, where animals had the least time co-evolving alongside with humans. The smoking gun of the Quaternary extinction lies within the vegetation. The Last Glacial Maximum cut out a lot of the protein-rich forbs and it wasn’t as abundant…
The exact reason for the Pleistocene extinction is still not known, this data implies that top-down forces and humans are the reason the extinction happened. This data is important because during the Anthropocene humans continue to put animals at risk for another extinction. The authors used data from the Pleistocene and recent data to show that high rates of predation and humans could have lead to the extinction. Both carnivores and humans caused the extinction, because both were competing for prey which lead to a lower percentage of megafauna.…
The Permian Mass Extinction is defined as one of five major mass extinctions which the earth experienced. Mass extinctions are caused by great changes of environment, and these changes take creatures’ ways of living. Geologic factors are one of main factors which generate big changes.…
People may believe otherwise but that is not what i believe. Animals may be going extinct but scientist are finding new species every so often so the amount will be going up. We kill animals but mothers reproduce every spring and we will see much more of that animals throughout time. There may be a mass extinction going on but there are still many other species that we still have yet to uncover. So at the end i believe that there is still much more to find and there will be many more species of animals and that they have gone up over…