WEBVTT - Mass Extinction: Earth's Cycle of Annihilation 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:14.040 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.040 My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, this is Christian Seger Christian. 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.320 Where do you stand on mass extinction? Well, I think 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:22.599 it's a good thing. Yeah, yeah, just sort of a 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:27.000 regular sort of cleaning out of the lent catcher of 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.560 the of civilis exactly Cosmos Earth changing its oil every 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:35.240 couple of million years. Okay, all right, Today we're gonna 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:38.880 talk about mass extinctions, and in particular we're going to 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:44.080 talk about it in relation to Anteine Knewitz, who used 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:45.680 to be the other in chief over at Iona and 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:50.440 she's now at Gizmodo, both under the Gawker banner, I believe, uh. 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.279 And she has this great book called Scatter Adapt and 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:57.160 Remember how humans will survive a mass extinction. And so 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.000 what we're gonna do today is we're gonna talk about 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.480 the five mass extinctions that have already happened on Earth. 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:05.120 We've already gone through five of them before human beings 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:09.720 were even walking around. The sixth one that we're pretty 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.800 much with no doubt living in right now, and then 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:16.600 what nuances and some of the other articles that we 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:21.400 researched for this episode. Recommendations are for surviving the sixth 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.240 mass mass extinction that's coming up on us right because 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.160 they can be survived based on the ones we've seen 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:29.480 so far. You have such creatures as say the earthworm, 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:33.399 that's a champion of surviving mass extinction events. Exactly. Yeah, 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:36.959 And uh, let's keep in mind that for a mass extinction, 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:42.520 what qualifies as one is that seventy of all species 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.920 go extinct in less than two million years, So that 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:50.840 leaves you know which earthworms would fall under. There's also 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.600 a really interesting creature that Annally talks about in her 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:56.240 book called the Listosaurus, and we'll get to there. Um. 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.639 But I should qualify this by saying that, uh, last 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:04.840 your fallen. For our How Stuff Works video channel, I 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:07.840 interviewed and Antale about this book, and you can go 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.160 and watch that episode on our HSW channel right now. 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:13.359 It's about twenty minutes long, and I get to talk 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:15.760 with her personally about the book and her ideas, and 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:20.000 she's much more eloquent and steeped in this material than 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.600 than we are. But this is a fun discussion I 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:25.239 think for us to kind of piggyback on and bring 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:27.320 some of our how stuff works knowledge to the table 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:29.480 as well. Indeed, if you want to watch that video, 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:31.200 I'll make sure that there is a link to it 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:33.560 in the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.880 bow your Mind dot Com. So okay, we established what 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.640 a mass extinction is. Uh, what are the two basic 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:47.000 causes for mass extinction? Well, there's usually inanimate physical world events, right, volcanoes, 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.920 climate changes, outer space debris. We all think of this 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.080 massive massive asteroids striking the planet and killing all the dinosaurs, right, 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:58.440 that's basically the one that everybody kind of imagines. But 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.000 there's also long term to inches to biological life that 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:06.639 are affecting the ecosystems around us and killing off species. Uh, 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.400 and we are responsible for some of those. And then 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:11.880 in those five previous ones, which will go through shortly, 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:14.320 you know that there was a lot of versions of 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:18.440 an invasive species that were destroying habitats and and subsequently 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:20.640 the species that lived within them. Yeah. I mean, it's 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:24.640 always important to keep in mind that yes, humans and 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.000 and are and various other creatures live on Earth, but 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.040 we all we live in a very slim portion of 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:32.280 the atmosphere here on Earth, and you can break that 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:36.240 down even further, especially you know, depending on the particular species, 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.360 very small pockets of even that layer of atmosphere, depending 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:44.760 mon climate and an environment, So it becomes less of 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:47.520 a we are the creatures who live on this planet, 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:50.480 as we are the creatures who live in often very 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:55.520 small areas of this planet, and the in areas of 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:59.960 this planet that are susceptible to catastrophic change. And keep 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.320 in mind too, that these environmental changes we're talking about 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:08.440 take sometimes a billion years, like these are it's the 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.680 the the time that these go through. It's unfathomable. I 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:15.800 don't know about you, but from my human consciousness, I 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.000 have a hard time. Once we get to a million years, 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:20.880 I'm like, I don't know, it's it's all, you know, 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:26.000 great terrain after that. But these are huge amounts of time, 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:28.920 and that's why we're fairly confident that we can say 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:31.960 that we're living in one right now, because keep in mind, 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.760 they're two million years long, so, uh, it's happening at 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.840 an incredibly slow pace to our human lives. Yeah, it's 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.240 a lot easier to comprehend that space collision situation where 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:44.760 something snacks into the Earth and it brocks everything out, 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:47.680 or a you know, the volcano going that's erupting in 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:52.320 the background of that dinosaur illustration in our childhood paleontology books. 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.520 But we have to think about the long term changes 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:59.919 that steadily alter the environment and killed off the species 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.000 that have found their their niche within that environment. That's 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:06.279 that's a little harder to comprehend. Yeah, absolutely, So let's 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.359 look at our five examples here. The first one is 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:12.960 the order vichi and extinction event. Uh. And this occurred 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.159 somewhere between four hundred and nine million years ago and 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:20.599 four hundred forty five million years ago. And the ideas 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:23.640 that you know, the world before that was the Cambrian period. 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.680 It was basically multicellular life evolving over the course of 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:31.279 millions of years. But what happened was this catastrophe that 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.360 some think was caused by cosmic rays from outer space. 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:38.920 Now let's qualify this. This isn't like cosmic rays from 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:42.560 some science fiction novel or comic book or anything like that. 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:47.080 This is energetic sub atomic particles that let's say they 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:50.040 were blasting us today, right, they would damage our DNA 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:54.360 and probably cause cancer within us. But they more importantly, 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:57.520 they could also affect the atmosphere, and that's what the 0:05:57.520 --> 0:05:59.960 theory is that happened here in the order Vichyan period 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:05.479 was that they affected the atmosphere. They basically turned coastal 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.640 habitats into deserts, and most of the life forms that 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:12.000 were out there, these multi cellular life forms were marine based. 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.160 They were living in water, so their entire habitat was destroyed. 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:18.080 And we see the ice age because the world is 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.479 covered in these you know cloud cover. Basically that makes 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:25.240 everything colder and it freezes. So we see a massive 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.160 not a complete reset, but it's kind of kind of 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.840 a massive reboot of life on Earth. Life is just 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:35.160 finally getting to the point where it's evolving, uh, to 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.440 you know, a couple of different cells, and and it 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.080 gets blasted with ice. Yeah. Yeah, it's easy to I 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:43.320 guess to think about these two in terms of like 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:47.159 economic comparisons. You know, there's an economic downturn and uh 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:50.200 and what happened suddenly you know a number of positions 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:52.920 have to disappear at a particular place of work, which 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:57.240 leads to different two roles changing, which leads sometimes to 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:02.000 bigger opportunities for those that remain. Yeah, absolutely, but it 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.960 but it changes the playing field. Yeah, and there's you know, again, 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:08.400 let's keep this in mind too, there's not a lot 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:12.720 of control that any of the players involved have over this. 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:15.040 So we get to the second one then, which is 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:19.680 the Late Devonian extinction, and this is four hundred and 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:23.360 fifteen million years to three hundred and fifty eight million 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:26.720 years ago, And the basic cause of this one was 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.800 what we were mentioning earlier, invasive species. So the world 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.120 at the time, it's often referred to as Annalee had 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:35.240 talked to me about in our interview as the age 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.840 of fishes and um, there's some plant life on land, 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.360 but for the most part, again we're talking about marine life. 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.480 Can you get this combination of earthquakes and volcanoes that 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.960 start pushing habitats into different areas of the world together, 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:52.600 and the habitats smashed together because of these natural disasters, 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:56.480 and you get these inland seas where predators start taking 0:07:56.480 --> 0:07:59.320 over habitats that they didn't previously exist in. Right, So 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:04.880 massive invasive species take over and the killop seventy of 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:08.520 the species that are existing in these previous ecosystems. From 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:10.920 an economic standpoint, you can think of this as see 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:13.760 the merger of two companies, Suddenly there are redundancies that 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:16.040 have to have to be dealt with. These both of 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:18.920 these uh, these individuals have the same job. Which one 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.960 is going to eat the other one? Uh? Yeah, And 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.120 and let's stick with this metaphor. I like this, So, uh, 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:30.480 new species do not evolve for a long time after 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:36.360 this Devonian extinction period. So from this corporate perspective, there's 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.280 no new jobs being created, right, there's no new positions. 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.640 There's not a lot of creativity within the organization. That 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.600 leads us to the Permian period, which is two hundred 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.080 million to two hundred and fifty one million years ago, 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:54.360 and this is the big uh. They refer to it 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:59.000 as the Great Dying, which I particularly like that name. 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:04.000 It sounds like some Norwegian black metal band. Yeah. But 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:08.280 this is basically the mega volcano era, right, So the 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.000 world is all getting pushed together again. There's these land 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.520 masses that are basically forming what we call Pangaea, and 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:18.880 there's this massive climate change and mega volcanoes, and the 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:22.240 mega volcanoes are belching out these toxic gases that go 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:24.720 into the atmosphere again, you know, very similar to the 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:29.240 cosmic rays creating these this cloud cover the species on 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:33.040 the planet die off. It takes seventy five to qualify 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:36.080 as a mass extinction. Got twenty more percent here, No 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:38.440 wonder is called the Great Dyeing. Yeah, like this is 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:40.959 this is one of those examples where you can say 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:45.400 it came pretty close, almost wiped everything out. Yeah. So 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:49.000 the world afterwards is basically the the ocean becomes acidified. 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:52.319 We've got what we would think of today as pollution, 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:55.480 but it's you know, caused by mega volcanoes and and 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.400 this this is this horrible gas that's everywhere in the 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:02.040 air and h effects that are similar to what we 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:05.880 would call global warming today. But the five percent survival though, 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.760 that's kind of like the corporation has been reduced to 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:12.480 a mere startup right right after thee And this is 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:15.480 what the startup consists of. This is this is anally 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.280 really spelled this out for me, and I liked it. 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:22.360 She said that some scientists refer to this era as 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:27.440 slime world because the main creatures of the five percent 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:31.079 that survived, or what we would refer to as slimes. Uh. 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:33.400 So you've got these slimes that are moving around this 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:38.480 black sludge basically right, and then crocodiles. So this it's 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:42.560 not a friendly place. Is this barely breathable habitat full 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:46.800 of slime and crocodiles. Uh. And that goes on until 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:50.960 we've got the early Triassic period two hundred and fifty 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.080 million to two hundred and twenty million years ago, and 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:57.480 this is where we start seeing the early evolution of 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:02.319 dinosaurs again. Egg of volcanoes come into play. They start 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:09.160 blowing up, pushing continents around, and you know, habitats are destroyed. Okay, 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:12.720 So as these habitats get pushed together, food webs, you know, 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:16.200 the relationships between these different animals and and the and 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:21.640 the flora within their regions start unraveling essentially. And uh. 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.280 In Annally's book, she has a great example of the 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:28.320 one animal that survives this. This is this is the 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:31.880 survivor that we should look to as an example for 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.800 our own case of living through the sixth mass extinction. 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:40.320 It's called the listrous saurus and it's basically this is 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:44.000 the description from the book an ancestral or no, maybe 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:48.160 you added this one an ancestral shovel lizard. Added a lizard. Yeah, 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:51.320 I love that description. Shovel lizards. So basically it's faces 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:55.320 a shovel, right that survived. It kind of looked like 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:57.240 it was about the size of a pig, and it 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:01.439 was mammal like reptile aisle, Right, it had like strands 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:03.040 of hair and stuff like that. But I believe it 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.599 qualified as a reptile. And but here's how it survived. 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:09.240 Because of its shovel face. It was able to burrow 0:12:09.280 --> 0:12:13.200 its way underground and survive all of these you know, 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:18.320 pushing around of land masses and the various you know 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.240 problems with breathing in the air and also the the 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.480 invasive species. And uh so what they do is they 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:28.040 basically go underground, and they had this special way of 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:31.160 breathing so that they could breathe really well underground with 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:36.880 low oxygen levels, even if there was dusty airborne contaminants. 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:41.120 So they adapted essentially to survive in this world. Uh. 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:43.800 And the other thing that was really fascinating about the 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.200 listener store is not a picky eater would basically eat 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.720 anything that came across. So, you know, as it's shoveling 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:53.640 around under the earth, I'm picturing, Uh, what are those 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:57.040 creatures from D and D that that like, uh tunnel 0:12:57.080 --> 0:12:59.319 around there? Like called land sharks or something like that. 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.120 Oh yeah, I'm trying to now I'm thinking of all 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:07.080 the different under dark creatures. Number hulk lister source is 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.000 a good D and D monster. That we should add 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:12.440 that to somebody's campaigns someday. Yeah. I love the the 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.040 idea too, that it it survived because it was essentially 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:17.720 a generalist, because that also kind of that kind of 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:20.880 falls into the whole economic corporate structure as well, and 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:23.280 one that I often fall back on when I when I, 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:25.520 you know, start thinking about, you know, where I am 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:27.320 in a particular place, and I'm thinking, all right, I, 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.040 you know, make sure that I don't have all my 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.400 my tools in one basketing know, exactly a journalist because 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:37.440 jack of all trades, master of not Yeah. Yeah, that's 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:42.040 the list of source for you. It's the long term employee. Yeah, 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:43.840 who do you want to be when the when the 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:45.839 cuts come? Do you want to be the social media 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:50.360 specialist or the tumbler specialist? You know? Right? Yeah? Like that. 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:52.560 You know, sometimes it can behoove you to specialize, but 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:56.040 don't specialize so much that you're the you know, you're 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:58.960 essentially this one creature that has survived to live in 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.719 a very particular uh you know, tidle pool. And when 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.520 that title pool dries up your toast, you're the first 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:09.200 one to get the axe. In mass extinctions and incorporations, 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.600 life lessons from stuff to blow your mind. Uhl SOO, 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:15.080 then we get to the one. This is the one 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.320 that everybody knows about, right, that's the fifth one. This 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:19.400 is the one we all think of. It's the Cretaceous 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.960 period a hundred and forty five million to sixty five 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:31.720 million years ago. This is the meteorite impact striking basically destroying. Uh. 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:36.840 There's massive impact in what today is Baja California. Uh, 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:39.680 and it kills off the dinosaurs. Right. This is the 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:43.880 like Land before Time Jurassic Park, the one that's really 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:47.160 hammered it into our heads. And uh, there's an interesting 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:49.360 thing here though, that's going on. In Antalye's book, she 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:53.320 says that between scientists that study this particular era, there's 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:56.920 some contention that it, yes, there was definitely some kind 0:14:56.960 --> 0:14:58.920 of impact in that area of the world, and yes 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:02.880 that probably contribute it did to, you know, an extinction 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:06.440 of of certain species. But they also think that there 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:10.920 were some more mega volcanoes going on more likely in India, 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:14.680 and that it's easy to think about again, like let's 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:16.960 get to this idea of it's really easy to think 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:20.520 about this huge asteroid striking Earth and just killing everybody 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:24.000 in one fell swoop, right, but it Yeah, those that 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.760 were in the general area of impact were killed instantly. 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:29.520 But that's not where we're seeing the extinction. That's not 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:33.440 where the sevent of species are dying off. It is 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.760 the world afterwards, because you get this again, slow process 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:41.200 of climate change makes it really hard for plants to grow, 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.600 subsequently makes it really hard for animals to find something 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.800 to eat, and then the carnivorous animals who are eating 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:50.200 the other animals subsequently don't have a lot to eat. 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.480 So again food food webs are unraveling. There's just not 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:57.200 a lot left. Yeah, I mean we're talking about for 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:00.080 the most part, with these volcano examples and the and 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:03.000 the impact examples, it's it's less about getting trapped in 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:04.840 the lava floor. We're getting hit by the thing that 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.320 collides with the earth as much as the material that's 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:11.600 dejected into the atmosphere. The sort of nuclear winter scenario 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:15.760 where where there's just less some light reaching the earth. Yeah, 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:20.160 it's interesting, Like, uh, I'm thinking about disaster movies right now, right, 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:22.960 and like we have this sort of obsession with them 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.800 in in in popular culture right now. Like I think 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.200 San Andreas comes out this weekend, which is the movie 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.440 that features the Rock rescuing his family from the Big 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:37.960 one in California. Uh and um yeah, yeah, you know, 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.600 when there's a big earthquake like that, of course lots 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:43.320 of people are going to die, but the after effects 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:48.040 are what's going to really affect the larger community, the 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:51.080 entire ecosystem of the planet. Yeah, especially when you start 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:55.240 stealing seeing these these the spiraling collapse as the webs 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:59.840 begin to unravel. Yeah. All right, we've taken you on 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:04.119 just a roller coaster ride through the five extinction events 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:07.280 that have occurred so far. Uh. And now we're going 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:12.360 to discuss the sixth great extinction event. Uh, one that 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:14.800 we may be living in right now that may not 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:18.320 you know, consists of some sort of cosmic calamity just 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:22.920 wiping things out, but rather the slow process that has 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:27.880 a lot, if not everything, to do with the human civilization. Yeah, 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:30.360 and that's the key, Like with those other ones, it's 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:34.080 very much about the slow you know, again, a mass 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:38.560 extinction requires two million years for the breakdown. Um. But 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:42.720 if we look at the sort of longitudinal uh, what 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:47.280 what is called the background extinction rate. So this is basically, uh, 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.600 all the time species are dying out right, not because 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.080 of mass extinctions. It's just part of the natural order 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:57.960 of things. You know, species die, new species come come forth. Uh, 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:01.520 and there's they're always going on. But the background extinction 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:04.520 rate has been higher. There's been a huge spike in 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:08.639 numbers since the Cretaceous period. So actually, if you go 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.480 and you look at at our how Stuff Works articles 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:15.840 on mass extinction, surviving mass extinction, things that are causing 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:18.760 the six mass extinction, there's some interesting stuff in there 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:22.600 as well. And our colleague Jonathan Strickland from tech Stuff 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:25.440 and Forward Thinking actually wrote one of those pieces, and 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:31.320 he cited a statistic that says that the background extinction 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:34.480 rate for speechies is somewhere between a hundred to a 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:38.160 thousand times greater than it should be. Uh. And he 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:42.400 cited Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson as being somebody who 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:46.560 estimated that we're looking at thirty thousand species going extinct 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:50.600 every year. Uh, And so you know, we're still under 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:54.399 the seventy five percent threshold range. But that's faster than normal. 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:59.520 Another another statistic here is that the background rate is happening. 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:05.040 They're on the average. It's point one extinctions per million 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.960 species per year. Okay, this is this is how people 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.680 have studied this. Look at it. It's actually quantified as 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:15.600 e over m s y extinctions per million species per 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:20.439 year UM. But the current rate is somewhere again, like 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.440 I said, between a hundred and a thousand, so we're 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:28.400 far over what you know, the average is there. So okay, 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:32.000 so we know that our background extinction rate is significantly 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:34.880 higher than it should be. Right. Uh, let's let's take 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:36.119 a look in the same way that we looked at 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:39.879 those other extinctions at the world before. You know what 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:41.920 we had, and you know what we're looking at now. 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:45.399 So you know, I'll remember it all takes a seventy 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:49.320 five species in two million years. Uh, and we're looking 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:53.640 at you know, there's like roughly you know, five major signs, 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:56.200 but there's all kinds of other external reasons that could 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:58.040 cause our mass extinctions. Right, And do you want to 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:00.040 talk a little bit about the age of man and 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:02.920 how you know we're coming into that. Yeah, I think 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:07.000 this is a vital piece of the puzzle here because, uh, 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:09.800 many people refer to this age that we're living in now, 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:14.320 this age, potentially of the sixth grade extinction event, is 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:18.960 the anthropasyne era, the the age of man, because humans 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:22.800 are now the dominant force of change on Earth or 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:26.960 not just augmenting our physical selves, but but we're also 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:32.800 augmenting the land around us from ancient aqueducts and cloud seating, um, 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:36.399 you know on up until you know the agricultural revolution. Uh, 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.480 even if you go back, you know, even before agriculture, 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:41.720 and you just look at us killing off the mammoths, right, 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:43.919 we're hunting the mammoths. And then when we kill off 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:47.639 the mammoths, it allows birch to grow unconsumed and erase 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.800 much of the grassland. Uh. And then and these and 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:53.520 the trees then change the color of the landscape, making 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:55.879 it much darker so that it absorbs more of the 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.399 sun's heat and this heats at the air. Um. And 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:02.919 so this process would have added to natural climate change, 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:05.600 making it harder for the mammoths to cope and helping 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:09.600 the birch tree spread further. Which I love this example 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:12.960 because it shows that even even primitive humans just doing 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:16.760 the most primitive thing possible, just spearing a bunch of mammoths. 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:19.760 Right in doing that, we we just dropped the balance 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.439 and we begin kind of paraforming the world into a 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:28.120 new form. It's the classic invasive species conundrum basics, because 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:30.600 we are the big invasive species we are, and not 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.800 only are we an invasive invasive species, but we are 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:39.720 also moving other life forms out of their natural habitats 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:43.080 and into other ones because we find them aesthetically pleasing. Yeah. So, 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:46.200 for instance, an example that is often used as the 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.440 kudzoo plant in Southern America where we live right now. 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.560 It was brought here and it's taking over chunks of 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:56.160 the entire United States since the late eight hundreds because 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:57.840 people brought it here. I thought that it was appealing, 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.439 and now it's everywhere, right Like, man, I can't like 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:03.679 walk down the street in Atlanta without seeing, you know, 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:08.200 a house or a wall overgrown with kad zoo. Uh 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:11.960 there's even yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah, I mean even some 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:15.199 of the tolerated things in our neck of the woods. 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:18.439 The English ivy. People love English ivy, but it's it's horriful. 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.160 What you know kills trees, that it's it's invasive. Here's 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:23.560 one of my favorite examples. I actually did an episode 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:28.680 about this for Brain Stuff. Uh raccoons. So um, this 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.040 is I'll try to make this brief, but this is 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:34.680 a perfect example of human beings causing an invasive species 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:38.600 problems a problem. So in Japan in the nineteen seventies, 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:43.400 there's this cartoon featured this cute cartoon raccoon Okay, and 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:48.040 Japanese importers said, wow, like people really love this cartoon. 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:51.879 Let's start importing raccoons from the United States. They're going 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:55.639 to make great pets. And of course they're not domesticated animals. 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:58.439 So these families would go out and buy raccoons and 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:01.879 then you know, they were fairal animals basically, and they 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:04.640 couldn't domesticate them. They didn't they couldn't live with them, 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:06.800 so the raccoons either escaped or they were let out. 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:11.560 Right now, Japan is facing this huge crisis of raccoon 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:17.159 proportions because they have raccoons all throughout the forests in Japan, 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:21.879 and there um in particular a problem because they're attacking 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:26.960 the historical landmarks in Japan like temples and such um 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:29.639 not attacking. It's not like these raccoons are like rising up. 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:32.199 It's not Planet of the Raccoons. But they're you know, 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:35.480