Scientists Say World is in 'Mass Extinction Spasm'. By John Boitnott, NBC 11 (San Francisco), August 12, 2008. "[In an online article this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UC Berkeley] researchers said substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet… 'Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years,' [said study co-author David Wake, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley]. 'They made it through when the dinosaurs didn't. The fact that they're cutting out now should be a lesson for us.' New species arise and old species die off all the time, but sometimes the extinction numbers far outweigh the emergence of new species… [and] extreme cases of this are called mass extinction events. There have been only five in our planet's history, until now, scientists said. The sixth… which Wake and others argue is happening currently, is different from the past events. 'My feeling is that behind all this lies the heavy hand of Homo sapiens,' Wake said… In 2004, researchers found that nearly one-third of amphibian species are threatened, and many of the non-threatened species are in decline."
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