The latest edition of the journal Nature includes a paper authored by Tony Barnosky entitled “Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?” Co-authors include UCMP’s Susumu Tomiya, Brian Swartz, Tiago Quental, Charles Marshall, Jenny McGuire, Emily Lindsey, Kaitlin Maguire, Elizabeth Ferrer and the Integrative Biology department’s Nicholas Matzke, Guinevere Wogan and Ben Mersey. They used new paleontological information to make an apples-to-apples comparison between current extinction rates and mass extinctions from the past. The results show that modern extinction rates resemble a mass extinction and reinforce the importance of saving endangered species in order to maintain biodiversity on Earth.
Read more about this exciting research:
- The full paper at Nature
- Detailed article summarizing the work at the UC Berkeley News Center