Biodiversity: What is a mass extinction and are we causing one?

Key Facts

• Scientists have estimated how quickly we are losing species by looking at the fossil record and using it to calculate an average "background rate" of extinctions during times when no mass extinctions were occurring.
• Image source, Getty Images Image caption, Researchers use the fossil record to estimate extinction rates during different periods on Earth Whether all of this means we're in a mass extinction or not is heavily debated.
• Dr Ceballos, the ecologist at Mexico City's UNAM university, says that he believes that we will have fully entered a mass extinction by the end of the year 2150, and that we could lose 70% of all plants and animals within the next two centuries.
• Prof Pincelli Hull, a palaeontologist at Yale University, says it won't take a mass extinction event for humans to feel the bite of our impact on nature, so we shouldn't use that as a benchmark for a need to take action.

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