Life on Earth is in danger. 'How bad have things become and how fast are changes happening?' is the very question humans should aspire to answer at this present time. Now that the Earth has entered a new period of extinction, scientists from three U.S. universities have warned that animals, most particularly vertebrates, have been disappearing about 100 times faster than they used to, and humans could be among the first victims, The Nation reports.

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A study led by experts at Stanford University, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley states that not since the dinosaur era, which ended 66 million years ago, has planet Earth been losing species at such a rapid rate, reports Dawn.

"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," said co-author Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University professor of biology.

Lead author Gerardo Ceballos said,"if it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover and our species itself would likely to disappear early on."

The scientists examined documented extinctions of vertebrates, or animals with backbones, from fossil records and other historical data. They discovered that the current extinction rate was 100 times higher than when the Earth was not going through a mass extinction.

The study says that since the 1900s, there have been more than 400 vertebrates that had disappeared where normally, such a loss would be seen in over a period of 10,000 years, reported The Nation.

The study, which was published in the Science Advances Journal, points the causation to three main events, namely: climate change, pollution and deforestation. As ecosystems are being destroyed through these events, the study predicts that benefits such as pollination by bees may be lost within three generations of humans.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) states that there are at least 50 animals that move closer to extinction every year. About 41 percent of amphibians and 25 percent of mammals are on the verge of extinction.

As reported by IUCN, the lemur is one of the less fortunate species to face an inevitable extinction in the wild in the future.

In the past year, Stuart Primm, a biologist and extinction expert at Duke University in North Carolina, has also warned that the current rate of extinction was actually 1,000 times faster, not 114, as claimed by the more recent study.

TagsSixth Mass Extinction, endangered species, Animals, Study, Science