BBC Focus Magazine

[Shadowwolf]

A painstakingly detailed investigation shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden events. The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth's marine life, and it killed in stages, according to a newly published report.

Thomas J. Algeo, professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati, worked with 13 co-authors to produce a high-resolution look at the geology of a Permian-Triassic boundary section on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. Their analysis, published Feb. 3 in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, provides strong evidence that Earth's biggest mass extinction phased in over hundreds of thousands of years.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120203113308.htm

Could be happening right now and we wouldn't be able to tell given the timescales.

[M Paul Lloyd]

I guess the trick is to be part of the surviving 10%.....

[Willxx]

Could be happening right now and we wouldn't be able to tell given the timescales.

Thats been my arguement against a lot of "stuff" reliably reported as "fact" over the last couple of decades

[Shadowwolf]

Dare I ask such as?

[Lateralman]

Spot on. It is happening now. The planet has a bad rash again; time to apply the asteroid Clearasil.

[Shadowwolf]

It is happening now.

I think the point is that we don't know, bit hard to distinguish relatively normal loss with what would cumulatively over thousands of years be a global extinction.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Thing is extinction is a part of the natural progress of evolution and if I recall correctly at least 99% of all species, that have ever lived, have gone extinct, and its important to note that's not just in the last fifty years but over geological time scales.

Also evidence seems to suggest that the demise of the mighty Dinosaurs was far a more protracted business than previously thought.

So really just because a species no longer has a purpose and thus faces extinction is not really a problem as far as the natural turn of things is concerned. Yes the world will be a sadder placed without wild Tigers but I can't see them factoring into the future Indo-Chinese super nation states anymore than Wolves or Bears would have a place in modern Europe.