Scientists believe that the Earth is currently going through its sixth mass extinction event.
In light of these findings, the authors of the study—Michael Rampino from New York University and Shu-Zhong Shen from Nanjing University in China—suggest that the current loss in biodiversity should perhaps be called the"seventh" mass extinction.
This event affected life on land and at sea, occurring around the same time as a huge volcanic eruption that produced the Emeishan Traps—a vast rocky formation that lies in what is now southwestern China.This eruption was likely one of the main drivers of this mass extinction event, according to the researchers.
"In terms of both losses in the number of species and overall ecological damage, the end-Guadalupian event now ranks as a major mass extinction, similar to the other five," the authors wrote in the study. In order, these extinctions are known as the Ordovician , the Late Devonian , the Permian , the Triassic and the Cretaceous .
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