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The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind
There have been five great extinctions in the long history of life on earth, the most recent 65 million years ago, when all dinosaur species perished in an astonishingly brief period of time. Each of these great extinctions was unimaginably catastrophic - at least 65 percent of all species living vanished in a geological instant; in the Permian extinction, nearly 95 percent of all species were obliterated. The agency for these extinctions, the why, is hotly debated - sudden climate change, asteroids, evolutionary inadequacy - but the patterns are remarkably consistent. Now, as Leakey and Lewin show with inarguable logic based on irrefutable scientific evidence, the sixth great extinction is underway. And this time the cause is beyond dispute: By the lowest estimate, thirty thousand species are wiped out by human agency every year - a rate that matches the patterns of the other five great extinctions with frightening exactitude. As the authors show, such dramatic and overwhelming extinction threatens the entire complex fabric of life on earth, including the species at fault, Homo sapiens. Unless we come to realize the devastating consequence of our rapacious behavior, we will follow the mastodon, the great auk, the carrier pigeon, and our other victims into the oblivion of extinction.
Book Details
- Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Publish Date: Oct 1st, 1996
- Pages: 271
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.24in - 4.97in - 0.61in - 0.47lb
- EAN: 9780385468091
- Categories: • Environmental Science (see also Chemistry - Environmental)• Human Geography• Life Sciences - Evolution
About the Author
Richard Leakey is the world's most famous living paleoanthropologist. He resigned from his position as chairman of the National Museums of Kenya when Kenya's president, Daniel arap Moi appointed him to head the Kenya Wildlife Service. His parents were the archaeologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey. His half-brother is the leading plant scientist, Colin Leakey.
Roger Lewin, PhD, is a biochemist, the former deputy editor of the British magazine New Scientist, and the author of Making Waves: Irving Dardik and His Superwave Principle, as well as many other highly praised books on biology such as Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos and Patterns in Evolution: The New Molecular View.