wynalazki: Holocene extinction

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The Holocene or Anthropocene extinction is an ongoing extinction event caused by human activity during the current geological epoch, impacting diverse families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, as well as both terrestrial and marine species. It is sometimes also called the sixth extinction (though this can also describe the Capitanian). Current extinction rates are estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates. The Holocene extinction was preceded by the Late Pleistocene extinctions at the end of the last ice age (to which human activity also likely contributed) and the extinctions caused by Poly…

Evidence: 51 • authority: 72

The Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME), sometimes referred to as the end-Ordovician mass extinction or the Ordovician–Silurian extinction, is the first of the "big five" major mass extinction events in Earth's history, occurring roughly 445 million years ago (Ma). It is often considered to be the second-largest-known extinction event, behind only the end-Permian mass extinction, in terms of the percentage of genera that became extinct. Extinction was global during this interval, eliminating 49–60% of marine genera and nearly 85% of marine species. Under most tabulations, only the Permian–Triassic mass extinction exceeds the Late Ordovician mass extinction in biodiversity loss. The extin…

Evidence: 51 • authority: 72

The Late Pleistocene to the beginning of the Holocene saw the extinction of the majority of the world's megafauna, typically defined as animal species having body masses of 45 kg (99 lb) or more, which resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity across the globe. The extinctions during the Late Pleistocene are differentiated from previous extinctions by their extreme size bias towards large animals (with small animals being largely unaffected), the widespread absence of ecological succession to replace these extinct megafaunal species, and the regime shift of previously established faunal relationships and habitats as a consequence. The timing and severity of the extinctions vari…

Evidence: 51 • authority: 72

The Permian–Triassic extinction event was an extinction event that occurred around the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, and with them the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. It is Earth's most severe known extinction event, with the extinction of 57% of biological families, 62% of genera, 81% of marine species, and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. It is also the greatest known mass extinction of insects. It is the greatest of the "Big Five" mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic. There is evidence for one to three distinct pulses, or phases, of extinction, with the major pulse of marine extinction occurring in a 60,000-100,000 year interval around 251.902 million year…

Evidence: 40 • authority: 72

This list of African species extinct in the Holocene covers extinctions from the Holocene epoch, a geologic epoch that began about 11,650 years before present (about 9700 BCE) and continues to the present. Africa is highly biodiverse; it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. However, a few species have disappeared from Africa as part of the ongoing Holocene extinction, driven by human activity. Madagascar and the Indian Ocean islands, Macaronesia, and Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha are biogeographically distinct from mainland Africa and have a much greater number of Holocene extin…

Evidence: 40 • authority: 72

The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, formerly known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction event, was a major mass extinction of three-quarters (75%) of the plant and animal species on Earth which occurred around 66 million years ago. The event caused the extinction of all the non-avian dinosaurs and most other tetrapods weighing more than 25 kg (55 lb), excepting some ectothermic species such as sea turtles and crocodilians. It marked the ends of both the Cretaceous period and the Mesozoic era, and logged the beginning of the current geological era, the Cenozoic era. In the geologic record, the K–Pg event is marked by a thin layer of sediment called the K–Pg boundary or K…

Evidence: — • authority: 80

Modernity's Complexities in West Asia and North Africa

Evidence: — • authority: 80

ALL EXTINCTIONS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL: COMPARISON OF FOUR EXTINCTION EVENTS THROUGH THE LATE DEVONIAN

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Caenorhabditis diversity on Pohnpei, Micronesia, provides evidence that the Elegans Supergroup has its roots in the Americas and diversified in the Pacific en route to Asia.. Model organisms are powerful tools for discovery in cell and molecular biology, and studies of their natural history have the potential to provide bridges between these fields and ecology and evolutionary biology. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a preeminent model, and recent findings place its center of diversity in the cool, high-elevation forests of Hawaii. To test models of biogeography and species coexistence, we investigated Caenorhabditis on Pohnpei, an island in Micronesia, home to the largest patch of h…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Herping the African Continent: Alien Amphibians and Reptiles in Sub-Saharan Africa.. Introduction of species represents today one of the most important problems of nature conservation. Special attention is paid to alien vascular plants and vertebrates. In the Afrotropical Region (sub-Saharan Africa), however, there is a lack of comprehensive review of alien amphibians and reptiles. The presented paper constitutes an attempt to overview the status, distribution and threats posed by introduced herp species to sub-Saharan Africa since the second half of the 18th century. This review includes 21 amphibian (including 10 established) and 57 reptile (including 33 established) species introduced to…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Why it is easier to date Quaternary extinctions than human colonizations under conditions of overkill.. Faunal extinctions correlate with human colonization worldwide during the Quaternary, yet the extent to which human hunting drove these losses remains debated. Resolving these debates depends on accurately dating both human arrival and animal extinction events. Herein I present a simulated overkill scenario modeling interaction between a founding human population and a single prey species. The simulation evaluates expected age offsets, the differences between the actual and observed dates, for extinction and colonization as functions of sample size and human population growth rate. Result…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Ancient DNA as a temporal lens: reconstructing evolution, migration, and disease dynamics.. Ancient DNA (aDNA) has transformed evolutionary biology and anthropology by providing direct, chronologically validated genetic evidence over millennia. This review synthesizes significant findings from the paleogenomic era (2010-2025), demonstrating how ancient DNA has resolved persistent debates across four interconnected themes: (i) human migration and admixture, revealing complex population transitions from archaic hominins to Holocene expansions; (ii) adaptation, tracking allele frequency changes during domestication and selection; (iii) pathogen history, clarifying the origins of pandemics and…