Biologists assess `sixth extinction': The Toronto Star

[Ivan Seeking]

The bad news is that the world's nearly countless plants — and the medicines they contain — are disappearing even more quickly than they can be located and studied. In most cases, we'll never even know that they existed or what lethal human diseases they might have cured.

Welcome to the "sixth extinction.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1066517109005&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467

[Phobos]

Welcome to the "sixth extinction."

That's the chilling term used by John Arnason, a professor of biology at the University of Ottawa, to describe the steady decline of the planet's rich trove of biological species, both plants and animals.


Makes it sound like it's just Dr. Arnason's brainchild! More on the same topic...

Leakey wrote a whole book about it in 1995...
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/sixthextinction.html

Eldedge in 2001...
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html

National Geographic in 1999...
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/9902/fngm/

[Ivan Seeking]

We can only hope that more biologists will get involved with collecting samples - DNA - from these quickly disappearing species. I doubt this effort is well funded though.