An international group of scientists has concluded that the Earth and its creatures are dangerously close to a mass extinction event that can be compared to the one that annihilated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

A landmark study released by researchers working for a project at Duke University in North Carolina have found that extinction rates are currently 1000 times higher than normal "background rate" due to deforestation, global climate change and the depletion of ocean fisheries.

Like Us on Facebook

Researchers said the Earth is on the brink of a "mass extinction event" or a widespread and rapid decrease in the amount of life on earth. They said this would be the sixth great extinction in the history of the Earth.

More chillingly, they said this mass extinction event is already underway, and that humans could be the underlying cause. The scale of the forthcoming mass extinction event could rival the one that wiped-out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, including a third to a half of all animal species on the planet.

Without human activities, the study calculated about one out of every million species goes extinct each year. People are now responsible for driving that number up to between 100 and 1,000 per million.

Duke University biologist and conservation expert Stuart Pimm said "time is running out" to avert the threat of mass extinction.

"When you look at the range of unsustainable things we are doing to the planet - changing the atmosphere, global warming, massively depleting fisheries, driving species to extinction - we realize we have a decade or two," Pimm warned.

"If we keep on doing what we are doing by the end of the century our planet will really be a pretty horrendous place."

The report states that if this event is to be avoided, humans need to make large scale changes immediately. The future crisis could be averted with the right intervention.

The report noted that conservation, education and "targeted preservation efforts" could slow down extinction rates.

The first great extinction occurred some 434 million years ago at the end of the Ordovician era when 60 percent of all plant and animal species became extinct. The second great extinction occurred 360 million years ago.

The third great extinction took place 251 million years and wiped-out between 80 percent and 95 percent of all species in the oceans. This mass extinction almost destroyed all of the Earth's coral reefs, which made a comeback 10 million years later.

The fourth great extinction 205 million years ago destroyed 80 percent of all land vertebrate and half of all marine invertebrate species at the end of the Triassic era.

The fifth great extinction that eliminated the dinosaurs was caused by a giant asteroid or comet that plunged into the sea off Mexico, destroying nearly all large life forms on the land. 

TagsEarth, mass extinction, humans, global warming, deforestation