Thread by @BiIndia

So many animals are going extinct that it could take Earth 10 million years to recover

businessinsider.in/science/enviro…

Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid just six miles wide struck the planet. The resulting cloud of dust and debris that funneled into the atmosphere blocked sunlight for several weeks, while earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis wreaked havoc on what is now the Americas.

When all was said and done, the Tyrannosaurus rex and its Saurichian compatriots had all died out, along with 75% of the planet's species.

Another force is driving Earth towards its next extinction event. Human-driven changes to the planet are hitting global species on multiple fronts, as hotter oceans, deforestation, and climate change drive floral and faunal populations to extinction in unprecedented numbers.

As much as half of the total number of animal individuals that once shared the Earth with humans are already gone, a clear sign that we're on the brink, if not in the midst of, a sixth mass extinction.

A new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution reveals that it took the planet around 10 million years to recover from the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.

As we continue to encroach on animals' habitats, pollute their ecosystems, and drive the Earth towards warmer and warmer temperatures, we're stubbornly marching away from a version of the world that we will never be able to get back.

Scientists have long argued that the 10-million-year time frame for global biodiversity to properly rebound is a feature of all five of Earth's mass extinctions, but for the first time, there's now fossil evidence of that delay.

The paleobiologists looked at how foraminifera biodiversity changed in the fossil record from before the extinction event to after, and how long it took for the organism's level of biodiversity to return to pre-asteroid levels after the catastrophe.

In an ecosystem, each animal and plant species occupies a unique niche. Following a mass disappearance of species, one might think that these niches would still be available for adaptable extinction survivors to then take over.

There is consensus on one aspect of the extinction trend, however: Homo sapiens are to blame. According to a 2014 study, current extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than they would be if humans weren't around.