Life on Earth has evolved over billions of years, and in the process, the number of species will become complex and wonderful, but it will also face extinction. Due to climate change and other reasons, the organisms on the earth eventually lose the conditions for survival and eventually perish or become extinct. According to the analysis of the scientific community, the earth has experienced 5 mass extinctions, and the sixth mass extinction has begun.
According to US media reports, biologists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, recently published a research paper in the journal Biological Review. The biologist proposed in the paper that the Earth is experiencing a sixth mass extinction, and that humans may witness the entire process.
To justify their point, biologists cite a wealth of evidence. First, mass extinction refers to a very short period of time in which the number of biological species declines sharply and eventually disappears completely. As it stands, Earth does send a signal of "mass extinction." According to biological expert estimates, the current biological species on Earth account for only 2% of the biological species that have been born on Earth, and the remaining 98% of the species have completely disappeared.
In addition, the Earth's environmental changes seem to be in line with the "law of mass extinction", for example, in the Ordovician Period, 440 million years ago, due to climate change, the polar ice layers rapidly thickened and the temperature dropped rapidly, resulting in 85% of the species completely disappearing due to the inability to adapt to environmental changes.
In the Permian era, 295 million years ago, 96% of the earth's life completely disappeared due to volcanic eruptions and climate change. Many people have the impression that mass extinctions are very fast, such as meteorite impacts or supervolcano eruptions. However, this is not the case, the so-called short time is very short compared to the 4.5 billion years of the history of the earth, but if it is placed on human beings, it will be an extremely long process.
For example, of the first five mass extinctions, the fastest extinction was the fifth asteroid impact event, but the whole process lasted nearly 200,000 years, and the history of human development was only 100,000 years. It is worth noting that the sixth mass extinction may be faster. According to the data given by the Biological Review, in 1500 years, at least 260,000 species have disappeared on Earth, accounting for about 13% of all species on Earth, far faster than the previous 5 times.
It should be pointed out that these 1500 years are the time of rapid development of human beings, in order to increase food production, burning mountains to expand the area of arable land, resulting in a large number of biological deaths. In the past 100 years, the West has entered the Age of Discovery, and at least 7 species have completely disappeared due to their hunting.
In response to this matter, Elon Musk, founder of the Us Space Exploration Technology Company, said that if humans want to survive, there is only one way, that is, to migrate to other planets, otherwise 100% will be extinct.