Scientists: Humans Will Not Survive Next Mass Extinction

Even though human beings have spread all over the planet and taken its resources, this species can still not survive a "mass extinction event" just like rare or endangered species, scientists said, according to rt.

One team from the University of Leeds probed into mass extinctions and said that widespread species too have become extinct.

Under normal circumstances, a populous species is likely to survive, rather than a rare or endangered one. But after examining the fossil records of vertebrates from the Triassic and Jurassic periods that existed 252 to 145 million years ago, scientists felt that a mass extinction at that time was caused by a volcanic eruption that erased about 80 percent of living species, giving rise to dinosaurs.

Scientists Alex Dunhill and Matthew Wills examined not only the distribution of species but also the manner in which they transformed in the same period. They then compared the results with the changes in overall biodiversity, gathering data on the risk of extinction.

The extinction of many groups of animals like crocodiles led to the creation of dinosaurs.

"The fact that the insurance against extinction given by a wide geographic distribution disappears at a known mass extinction event is an important result. Many groups of crocodile-like animals become extinct after the mass extinction event at the end of the Triassic era, despite being really diverse and widespread beforehand. In contrast, the dinosaurs which were comparatively rare and not as widespread pass through the extinction event and go on to dominate terrestrial ecosystems for the next 150 million years," Dunhill said.

The experiments were published in the journal Nature Communications. They thus suggest that less populous species might become more prominent, after mass extinctions.

"These results shed light on the likely outcome of the current biodiversity crisis caused by human activity. It appears a human-driven sixth mass extinction will affect all organisms, not just currently endangered and geographically restricted species," Dunhill added.

"Although we tend to think of mass extinctions as entirely destructive events, they often shake up the status quo, and allow groups that were previously sidelined to become dominant. Something similar happened much later with the extinction of the dinosaurs making way for mammals and ultimately ourselves. However, our study shows that the 'rules' of survival at times of mass extinctions are very different from those at 'normal' times: nothing is ever really safe," Wills said.