The Earth is headed for its first mass extinction since the dinosaurs roamed — and it's our fault

(Image credit: Courtesy Loewe)

The world's vertebrates — a class of animals that includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish — are going extinct at a rate 114 times faster than what is considered to be the norm. According to a new study published in the journal Science Advances, the number of animals that went extinct in the past century is equivalent to the number of animals that typically would go extinct within a period of 800-10,000 years.

At this rate, scientists say, the Earth is headed toward a mass extinction of a size that hasn't been seen since dinosaurs were wiped off the planet 65 million years ago. If this rapid loss of animal species does indeed signal a mass extinction, it would mark the Earth's sixth in its existence. But this potential mass extinction would also be different from previous ones in one depressing way: While other extinctions were likely caused by continental drift or the impact of an asteroid, scientists say that this time the key culprit is us:

Given the timing, the unprecedented speed of the losses and decades of research on the effects of pollution, hunting and habitat loss, [the scientists] assert that human activity is responsible."The smoking gun in these extinctions is very obvious, and it's in our hands," co-author Todd Palmer, a biologist at the University of Florida, wrote in an e-mail to The Washington Post. [The Washington Post]