EXTINCTIONS × ANTHROPOCENE

The Sixth Extinction

since about 1900 CE

Phanerozoic · Cenozoic · Quaternary · Holocene · Meghalayan

Vertebrate species are disappearing at least tens of times faster than the background rate read from the fossil record, and the populations inside those species are going faster still. Of 177 mammal species examined closely, every one has lost at least 30 per cent of the ground it used to occupy since 1900.

Why it matters

The five earlier crises on this timeline were set off by asteroids and volcanoes. This one has a species as its cause, which means it also has something none of the others had: it can be decided against. The ozone hole, further along this same timeline, is what that looks like when it happens.

Dating & uncertainty

Whether current losses already amount to a mass extinction of the kind preserved in the fossil record depends on how rates are estimated. Every published estimate puts them far above the background rate.

Sources

1. Ceballos et al. (2015), Science Advances · Accelerated modern human-induced species losses: entering the sixth mass extinction
2. Barnosky et al. (2011), Nature · Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?
3. Ceballos et al. (2017), PNAS · Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines

Earth history as one day

23:59:59.99762.4 ms before midnight

if Earth’s 4.54 billion years were compressed into a single day