CREO - the Committee on Recently Extinct Organisms
American Museum of Natural History &
the Center for Biodiversity and
Conservation (CBC)
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Extinctions since 1970
World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC),
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
United Nations (UN)
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The Extinction Website!
Peter Maas
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The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
The IUCN Species Survival Commission,
The World Conservation Union
(IUCN - International Union for
Conservation of
Nature and Natural Resources)
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MASS EXTINCTION UNDERWAY
David Ulansey, Ph.D.
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Recent Extinctions
EcoBirds
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Gone: Mass Extinction and the Hazards of Earth’s Vanishing Biodiversity
Julia Whitty, Mother Jones,
The Foundation for National Progress
[ 25 April 2007 ]
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By 2050 Warming to Doom Million Species, Study Says
John Roach, National Geographic News,
National Geographic Society
[ 12 July 2004 ]
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“Fossil Trout” Faces Extinction in Balkans,
Experts Warn
James Owen, National Geographic News,
National Geographic Society
[ 15 September 2003 ]
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Radiocarbon Dating Evidence for Mammoths on Wrangel Island, Arctic Ocean, until 2000 BC
S. L. Vartanyan, Kh. A. Arslanov, T. V. Tertychnaya,
S. B. Chernov, Radiocarbon, Volume 37, Number 1 [ 1995 ]
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The world today has become one in which
technology, riding on the back of scientific advance, appears to lead
societal evolution. Travel and communication are two of the areas
in which this is profoundly evident. Advances in travel now allow anyone
to span distances in hours that, a century and a half ago, required weeks
or months to traverse. Communication is instantaneous and omnipresent
throughout most regions of the world.
Medicine is undergoing an explosive revolution, both in the treatment and
eradication of disease and in the improvement of the human condition.
In the past, for example, loss of a limb would have condemned a person to
a life of diminished activity and, in some cases, social ostracism. Today,
even in many under-developed countries, such a loss can be overcome with
technology and modern medical science. Evidence is strong that, in the
near future, even such personal catastrophies as a severed spinal cord may
be either reparable or surmountable through computer- and servo-augmented
mechanical systems.
Spaceflight, still in its infancy, promises Mankind the ability to one day
travel to the stars and colonize other planets. At the time President
Kennedy issued his famous challenge to place a man on the Moon, the
technology and expertise necessary to do so did not exist. The achievement
of that goal is one of the greatest triumphs in exploration ever conceived
— how it was accomplished is the story of Man’s struggle
with and mastery of technology to expand his frontiers.
Each major advance in technology brings with it a new set of challenges.
Major issues confronting societies throughout the world today are the
responsible and ethical application of technology, how to deal with the
byproducts of a technological revolution driven by economics, and the need
to bring technology-derived benefits to people at all social and economic
levels. A less understood but more subtle problem is that of
integrating the reality of scientific and technological advance with
long-held social and religious doctrines.
Authored by Kenneth L. Anderson.
Original article published 3 June 2003, updated 27 August
2003.
Follow links to the right to learn more about recent extinctions of plant and animal species, what may be driving these
species to extinction, and what methods are used to determine whether a
species is extinct or is going extinct.
At the left margin, Related Links address topics of interest
pertaining to environmental issues and earth changes. View the
Technology & Science SiteMap
for a complete list of technology and science-related topics.
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