New study: “Oceans on the brink of mass extinction” 
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Author: Adam Hanlon ( adamhanlon )
Related Link: Underwater Times
Dr John Alroy, writing in the international journal Science, predicts that we are on the brink of a major extinction episode so severe that there has only been three mass extinctions on the level of the current one in the last half billion years. Dr. Alroy also predicts a dramatic change to the accepted rules of evolution, due to human behaviors and activities combined with climate change:
"What's worrisome is that some groups permanently become dominant that otherwise wouldn't have. So by causing this extinction, we are taking a big gamble on what kind of species will be around in the future. We don't know how it will turn out. People don't realize that there will be very unpredictable consequences."
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Comment(s):While I think it’s great that you draw attention to scientific research, I think you may not have fully understood this article by John Alroy.
The Science article you are referring to by John Alroy can be found here. The article that you link is actually a perspective by Charles Marshall.
The article is really about the effects of mass extinctions (and adaptive radiations) on the rate of diversification in marine taxonomic groups, and so it predicts the effects a mass extinction will have. It doesn’t actually predict that our oceans are on the brink of a mass extinction; it merely assumes we are (and rightly so, I think, but that’s nothing new, really).
Posted by JvA on 09/07 at 05:46 AM
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