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Earth Has Entered First ‘Mass Extinction’ Since Dinosaurs, Study Warns

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The Earth has entered its sixth mass extinction phase, a new study warns, and the time we have to avoid dramatic consequences is rapidly running out.

Vertebrates — which include mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish — are disappearing at a rate 114 times faster than normal, according the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. The study, led by Stanford, Princeton and the University of California-Berkeley, stated the number of vertebrate species that have gone extinct in the last century normally take 800 to 10,000 years to disappear under natural extinction rates.

“These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way,” the researchers wrote. The last such extinction was 65 million years ago, The Telegraph noted, when dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the planet.

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!!!!!BN2015-6-26MassExtinction1Are Humans Responsible For Earth’s First ‘Mass Extinction’ Since Dinosaurs?

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/earth-extinction-phase_n_7629330.html

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Giant Rats Could Take Over Earth After Next Mass Extinction

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Huffpost Science

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In the event of a future mass extinction, rats may be the animals best suited to repopulate the world, some scientists say.

And if rats did “take over” after such a wipeout, they’d likely balloon in size, scientists also say.

Mass extinctions have hit the Earth at least five times in geologic history, most recently about 65 million years ago, when scientists think an asteroid hit the planet and wiped out the dinosaurs. Mammals took advantage of the newly available ecological space and ultimately repopulated and dominated the animal kingdom.

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Scientists say that after a mass extinction, oversized rats may repopulate Earth. | Simon Flint via Getty Images
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Volcanoes, Not Meteorite, Killed Dinosaurs, New Study Suggests

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SAN FRANCISCO — Volcanic activity in modern-day India, not an asteroid, may have killed the dinosaurs, according to a new study.

Tens of thousands of years of lava flow from the Deccan Traps, a volcanic region near Mumbai in present-day India, may have spewed poisonous levels of sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and caused the mass extinction through the resulting global warming and ocean acidification, the research suggests.

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~~~Dino1

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/08/volcanoes-killed-dinosaurs-india_n_2258395.html?utm_hp_ref=science

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