The Earth began to be born about 4.55 billion years ago, and after a slow period of about 1 billion years, the first primitive life appeared on the Earth, about 4.1 billion years ago, but it takes millions of years or even longer to evolve backward from primitive life.
In these billions of years, with the development of time, there have been a variety of creatures on the earth, but from the beginning to the present, the vast majority of organisms, or 98% of the species, have disappeared from the world, and today's species are almost no different from the species of the past.
This is actually because in a long period of time, the earth has experienced 5 mass extinctions, that is, in a relatively short period of time, most of the different species have been extinct, completely disappeared or left a small part of the phenomenon, and such mass extinctions are believed by scientists to be experienced on the earth every 62 million years or so, often affecting animals more than plants.
According to the archaeology and research of scientists, the first mass extinction on Earth occurred 440 million years ago, and due to the global cold, the originally extremely prosperous marine life was devastated, and 85% of its species disappeared on the earth.
The most recent one occurred 65 million years ago, and scientists speculate that this mass extinction is most likely due to a meteorite that landed on Earth, because of its relatively large mass, the ability to hit the earth is far beyond human imagination, equivalent to 1 million times the largest earthquake in history.
Such a strong impact not only led to the frequent occurrence of geological disasters such as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., but also produced a series of subsequent effects, such as the arrival of sulfide material into the atmosphere, becoming acid rain, and 21,000 cubic kilometers of dust into the atmosphere, resulting in a lack of sunlight on the surface for decades.
As a result, almost all large animals on land were extinct, and the dinosaurs that ruled the earth for 163 million years were completely extinct, and only small land animals survived, eventually evolving humans.
Corals are the oldest marine species in the world, although most people will think that they are a marine plant, but in fact corals are actually animals from a biological point of view, is a lot of coelenterate polyps together to form, coral is actually the shell of these polyps.
Corals were already on Earth about 500 million years ago. Before the first mass extinction, due to the very warm climate at that time, the ancient ocean was larger than it is now, and many places, including our territory, are now submerged on the seabed.
Therefore, during this period, marine life flourished unprecedentedly, a large number of invertebrates flourished freely, corals, sea lilies, penstones and other taxa have also been developed, of which corals, although still relatively primitive, like large water hydra, have also formed small coral reefs.
Since the first mass extinction, although corals have also been affected, they have not been extinct, but after the third mass extinction period, most of the important coral groups have completely disappeared from the earth due to climate change and other reasons.
During the last mass extinction event, the Cretaceous mass extinction that occurred 65 million years ago, 60% of the corals were also destroyed due to meteorite impacts, leaving only the calcareous remains of the corals after the death of the polyps, which became important fossil evidence for human research.
However, on March 3, 2020, a foreign research team published a study data in Scientific Reports, they originally wanted to study the data and changes of corals over the years, to better protect these organisms that have great benefits to the environment, but found that corals have some different characteristics than before.
For example, tolerant to bleaching, living alone and not coexisting with other organisms, it should be noted that corals usually coexist with zooxanthellae, and the increasingly warming climate will cause corals to expel these zooxanthellae, resulting in bleaching. Since 10 years ago, the death of large-scale coral bleaching has repeatedly attracted human attention, and studies have shown that 99% of the world's coral communities may be bleached by 2100.
In addition to these, corals are also distributed all over the world and live in deep water areas below 100 meters, but in the past corals only lived in tropical or subtropical areas with temperatures above 20 ° C, and usually multiplied in waters between 100 meters and 200 meters, which obviously has a great change from today's corals.
According to the scientists' investigation, they found that the obvious difference between the corals today and the corals that survived the fifth mass extinction 65 million years ago showed almost exactly the same characteristics at that time.
When he saw this conclusion, one of the scientists in the research team even stood up straight, saying: They are doing what they were doing at that time!
This is the secret of ancient corals that have survived the previous 5 mass extinctions, they are the most sensitive creatures to the environment, they can be extremely keen to foresee the coming of disaster, so as to make their own changes in order to survive, adapt to changes in the environment.
This evidence is also undoubtedly a warning that the sixth mass extinction is coming.
In fact, long before 2020, there were already signs on Earth that the latest mass extinction was imminent.
Some scientists have concluded after research that in addition to mass extinctions, organisms on earth will be selected from an average of 10,000 mammals every 100 years, and 2 of them will be eliminated, which is a relatively slow extinction process, which is the natural law of survival of the fittest, and has little impact on the environment.
However, with the continuous development of human society, these two-legged creatures tossed out black smoke factories, a large number of polluting gases and wastewater were discharged around the world, in order to develop the economy and build cities to accommodate more people, they also cut down trees, drove away the original homes of animals and plants, and built cold and cruel steel and iron tiles.
Studies have shown that about 400 species have been extinct in just 100 years since the industrial revolution, and since the 20th century, species that have been extinct every 100 years have exceeded the previous 100 times faster rate.
Related surveys have found that almost every 3 hours, 3 species will completely disappear from the earth, and even the rate of extinction is 1 million times faster than the rate at which new species grow naturally.
Before, scientists only thought that these data were enough to make people reflect and vigilant, but they had not yet reached the point of the sixth mass extinction, but in 2015, the scientist Sebalo no longer had a fluke mentality, sounding the alarm to all mankind - mass extinction is happening!
At the same time, in 2020, Sebalo also found that in the past, scientists have greatly underestimated the rate of extinction of species, and the rate of extinction of species is accelerating as humans do not control the destruction of the environment.
Through research and investigation of the world's endangered species, Sebalo found that there are still 515 species in the world that can only survive in a very small living environment, and the total number does not exceed 1,000, even accounting for 1.7% of all species.
Nearly half of them have fewer than 250 populations, and they also live in tropical or subtropical areas, where the environment is extremely vulnerable to human destruction, and once humans invade and cut down forests for profit, these very few species will disappear completely.
The extinction of species is not simply to disappear, the natural biological chain has undergone a long evolution to tend to balance, once one of the links of extinction disappears, then it will have a great impact on the entire ecological environment, just like the butterfly with wings, no one will expect how much wind and waves it will set off.
For example, the coral mentioned earlier, coral can regulate the carbon dioxide concentration of seawater, but also can provide a home for zooxanthellae, and even the secreted mucus will also provide food for some organisms, once the coral is extinct, or lose a large half, then our marine environment and the diversity of marine life will be hit by a huge blow.
In fact, although human beings are not the most fundamental cause of the sixth mass extinction, the culprits who do accelerate the rate of mass extinction - the greenhouse effect, deforestation, land encroachment, etc., are undoubtedly accelerating the extinction of species.
The demise of living things has never been an ordinary thing alone, but is closely related to the natural environment and human survival, and the destruction of any environment will eventually "give back" to human beings themselves.
Therefore, human beings must begin to make concrete measures to compensate for the harm we have caused to nature and save the natural environment and biodiversity.
In 2020, the United Nations released the Global Biodiversity Outlook, which calls for eight transformations in human development to restore our biodiversity, reduce the negative impact of human activities on the natural environment and organisms, and hope that all countries can make biodiversity conservation the first consideration in decision-making.
And Our country has been protecting the biological development of the country and has made very positive efforts. For example, the snow leopard living on The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China, around 2000, the number of snow leopards in the wild was only about 4100, and by 2021 it has developed to 5000.
China's national treasure giant panda is from the original endangered animals, due to human artificial breeding, successfully reduced the degree of threat to giant pandas, wild giant pandas from 1114 40 years ago to now developed to 1864, downgraded to "vulnerable animals".
At the same time, in 1981, Chinese scientists traveled throughout the northeast and north China, and finally found the remaining 7 critically endangered crested ibises, after decades of efforts, by 2021, the number of crested ibises that were once few has increased to more than 5,000.
And China has also carried out rescue of other animals and plants, with the greatest efforts to maintain China's biodiversity, to achieve the concept of harmonious coexistence with nature, and even the government has invested 50 billion yuan to restore the ecological environment for animals and provide sufficient shelter for their survival and growth.
In fact, although the sixth mass extinction is approaching, and may even have arrived, human beings are not unintelligent creatures such as the dinosaurs of the past, we have brains, we have technology, and thousands of years of cultural development tell us that "man is determined to win the day" and tells us that we cannot "sit still".
We also believe that with the help of human wisdom and scientific and technological means, this biological mass extinction will certainly not bring about the tragic end of the previous 5 times, and human beings will certainly be able to escape this disaster.