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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.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Extinction (Biology), Evolution (Biology), Nature, Man, Influence on nature, Effect of human beings on, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Evolution, Science: General Issues, Biodiversity, Biological Extinction, Homme, Influence sur la nature, Biodiversité, Extinction (Biologie), Evolutionsökologie, Evolutionsbiologie, Biodiversiteit, Diversité biologique, Évolution (biologie), Espèces (biologie), Extinction, Human beingsShowing 5 featured editions. View all 5 editions?
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1
The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind
October 1, 1996, Anchor
in English
0385468091 9780385468091
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2
The Sixth Extinction (Science Masters)
February 12, 1996, Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Hardcover
0297817337 9780297817338
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3
The sixth extinction: biodiversity and its survival
1996, Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Limited
in English
0297817337 9780297817338
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4
The sixth extinction: biodiversity and its survival
1995, Doubleday
in English
- 1st ed.
0385424973 9780385424974
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5
The sixth extinction: patterns of life and the future of humankind
1995, Doubleday
Hardcover
in English
- 1st ed.
0385424973 9780385424974
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Includes bibliographical references (p. (255)-262) and index.
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