Extinction Level Events with Annalee Newitz - HowStuffWorks Interviews

Author Annalee Newitz (Gawker Media's Gizmodo editor-in-chief) talks to us about Earth's 5 mass extinctions, as well as the possibility that we live in one right now.

Music:
"The Sun Is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow", "CGI Snake", "Wonder Cycle", and "I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor" by Chris Zabriskie

Images:

Great Basin

Lystrosaurus georgi

Wooly Mammoth model

Videos:

Orden Ogan - F.E.V.E.R

The Fantastic Four trailer (2005)

Prometheus Official Clip: “Don’t Touch Anything”

The X Files - The End Plague vol. 1 Black Oil

[grackleospite]

I'm a geologist too.
1) Ordovician isn't Italian, its pronounced "Ordo-vish-on"
2) The more widely accepted impact that killed the dinosaurs was found from evidence of the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico. I think the Baja California crater she is talking about is a proposed crater still under study but would only be 37-49 million years old. Thumbs up for her using the term 'bolide'.
3) the Holocene is the Epoch we are living in. The period is the Quaternary.
Sorry for the rock-nerd rage.

[Slaterybooker]

1. If we are causing a mass extinction we are the first self-aware mass extinction.

2. I hope being self-aware of being part of a mass-extinction will cause a "further evolution" of our species. So our invasiveness will be less destructive.

[pezzguy]

Very interesting video! Can't believe life on Earth has been able to bounce back after so many mass extinctions. It would be really interesting to see how far life would've came without any of those extinctions. 

[svettnabb]

"A mass extinction kills 75% of all the species and lasts less than 2 million years."
One answer on what is the next mass extinction. Humanity. We are not far off from killing 75% of the species. Now we only have to make a cataclysmic event that kills of most of the humans. Say global warming combined with overpopulation, lack of necessities such as clean fresh water, leading to war, leading to mass extinction of humans. It is a win win.

Heck, according to calculations, we as a species are almost at the mark of being called a lord of mass extinction, and we have just barely lived here 200 000 years. Go team!

[Valera]

vid and sound are off a bit...but good stuff :)

[Bodilesss]

Although an ELE event probably wont happen in our lifetime"

Never heard of Fukushima?  Happening NOW--and for the last 4 years

[ipojuca]

The video is informative, but the continuous terror background music makes the whole thing cheesy.

[moebius]

I would not survive a mass extinction.

Q: How many species are there on Earth?

[Casshern_Sin]

05:24 - "Starbucksisation"

... Please excuse me while I go lay down for a bit.

[popojoeexplode]

Living on a rock made of fire with a thin crust is what gives the planet life and a magnitoshere keeping our happy asses safe from cosmic radiation via an atmosphere... i can no longer take you seriously. Btw the meteor hit in the yucatan not baja california.

[midgard]

video was cool till they said industrial pollution rivals a mega volcano

[moonpieface]

sprinkle a little science on some politics.  it makes the bs taste better.

[MrRavenXavier]

Money will save the world. Oh you don't have enough to survive, sorry.