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    Mass Extinction

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    shenyounan
    TOEFL

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    Mass Extinction

    Uploaded by

    shenyounan
    8 views2 pages
    TOEFL

    Original Title

    Mass extinction

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    TOEFL

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    8 views2 pages

    Mass Extinction

    Uploaded by

    shenyounan
    TOEFL

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Mass extinction

    Biological diversity has become widely recognized as a critical conservation issue


    only in the past two decades. The rapid destruction of the tropical rain forests, which
    are the ecosystems with the highest known species diversity on Earth, has awakened
    people to the importance and fragility of biological diversity. The high rate of species
    extinctions in these environments is jolting, but it is important to recognize the
    significance of biological diversity in all ecosystems. As the human population
    continues to expand, it will negatively affect one after another of Earth's ecosystems.
    In terrestrial ecosystems and in fringe marine ecosystems (such as wetlands), the most
    common problem is habitat destruction. In most situations, the result is irreversible.
    Now humans are beginning to destroy marine ecosystems through other types of
    activities, such as disposal and run off of poisonous waste; in less than two centuries,
    by significantly reducing the variety of species on Earth, they have unraveled cons of
    evolution and irrevocably redirected its course.

    Certainly, there have been periods in Earth's history when mass extinctions have
    occurred. The extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by some physical event, either
    climatic or cosmic. There have also been less dramatic extinctions, as when natural
    competition between species reached an extreme conclusion. Only 0.01 percent of the
    species that have lived on Earth have survived to the present, and it was largely
    chance that determined which species survived and which died out.

    However, nothing has ever equaled the magnitude and speed with which the human
    species is altering the physical and chemical world and demolishing the environment.
    In fact, there is wide agreement that it is the rate of change humans are inflicting, even
    more than the changes themselves, that will lead to biological devastation. Life on
    Earth has continually been in flux as slow physical and chemical changes have
    occurred on Earth, but life needs time to adapt — time for migration and genetic
    adaptation within existing species and time for the proliferation of new genetic
    material and new species that may be able to survive in new environments.

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