Conservationists predict mass extinction of wildlife like dinosaurs

Conservationists are worried about the fate of wildlife and have warned that nature is facing a global "mass extinction" for the first time ever since the demise of the dinosaurs. It is an alarming situation because figures paint a very grim picture. It seems global wildlife populations are set to fall by more than two thirds on 1970 levels by the end of the decade.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 27 October 2016.

The figures of 14,152 populations of 3,706 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles from around the world shows a 58% fall between 1970 and 2012. There is no indication that the average 2% drop in numbers each year will slow. This is based on a Living Planet report from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
The report goes on to caution that by 2020 populations of vertebrate species could have fallen by 67% over a 50-year period unless corrective action is taken on priority to reverse the damaging impacts of human activity. The main reasons for this trend is over-exploitation, loss of habitat, climate change and pollution.
A few examples are - loss of African elephants in Tanzania due to poaching, drop in numbers of maned wolves in Brazil because of grasslands being turned into farmland. Some other species under threat are the orcas or killer whales, leatherback turtles, the European eel and vultures in south-east Asia.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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Huge killer newts killed off dinosaurs more than 200-million years ago

#salamanders #dinosaurs Believe it or not, huge killer newts, the size of a small car, used to lurk in lakes and rivers and used to terrorized dinosaurs more than 200 million years ago. This is concluded based on study of fossil remains of the species, Metoposaurus algarvensis. These fossils have been found buried at the site of an ancient lake in southern Portugal which is believed to have been home to several hundred of the creatures.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 24 March 2015.

In the opinion of scientists, these ferocious amphibian, which are a distant relative of the salamander, was one of Earth's most feared predators in those days.
Dr Steve Brusatte, from the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, who led a study of Metoposaurus has commented that this new amphibian appeared to be something out of a bad monster movie. It was as long as a small car and had hundreds of sharp teeth in its big flat head. He has described the head that resembles a toilet seat, when the jaws snap shut.
The researchers have concluded that members of the Portuguese Metoposaurus colony would have died when a lake they inhabited dried up.
Of course, they were wiped out 201 million years ago, much before the dinosaurs became extinct. The death of the giant newts cleared the way for dinosaurs to take over the Earth.

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