![]() ![]() The Pulitzer Prize-winning book ‘The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History’ said that this is the first such event to be caused entirely by humans. Could human activity lead to a sixth? /evWmUGhWm2 There’ve been five extinction events in Earth’s history. The paper published last week in Biological Reviews stressed that “humans are the only species able to manipulate the Earth on a grand scale, and they have allowed the current crisis to happen.” ![]() But according to the IUCN, only 882 species are listed as extinct. via University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa)Įxtrapolating the results from the molluscs, the team wrote that since 1500 about 1,50,000 to 2,60,000 of all the known species have gone extinct. ![]() Shells of land snails from Rurutu – recently extinct before they were collected and described scientifically. However, among the 1.5 million described species of invertebrates, only less than 2 per cent have been fully evaluated and many remain in the ‘Data Deficient’ category. Invertebrates constitute about 95 per cent of known animal species and it is, therefore, essential to include them in the biodiversity extinction estimate, say researchers. ![]() According to the IUCN Red List data, molluscs have suffered a higher rate of extinction than birds and mammals. The team studied molluscs (land snails and slugs), the second-largest phylum in numbers of known species. Read more | Explained: What is the ongoing sixth mass extinction? ![]()
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