Article Summary:

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.”