Posted on 06/15/2016 5:57:56 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
SYDNEY, Australia - Australian researchers say rising sea levels have wiped out a rodent that lived on a tiny outcrop in the Great Barrier Reef, in what they say is the first documented extinction of a mammal species due to human-caused climate change.
The rodent was known to have lived only on Bramble Cay, a minuscule atoll in the northeast Torres Strait, between the Cape York Peninsula in the Australian state of Queensland and the southern shores of Papua New Guinea. The long-tailed, whiskered creature, called the Bramble Cay melomys, was considered the only mammal endemic to the Great Barrier Reef.
"The key factor responsible for the death of the Bramble Cay melomys is almost certainly high tides and surging seawater, which has traveled inland across the island," Luke Lieng, a scientist from the University of Queensland who was an author of a report on the species' apparent disappearance, said by telephone. "The seawater has destroyed the animal's habitat and food source."
"This is the first documented extinction of a mammal because of climate change," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Seawater’s fault.
I've got an idea. Let's "extinct" the smallpox virus. And Zika while we're at it.
What are ya? Against evolution?
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Species come and go naturally and have done for millions of years. Painfully obvious to anyone with a brain.
species that went extinct before humans arrived on the scene...?
Exactly!
Some species are meant to die out! By design.....
Why aren’t they hailing this as another feather in the cap of Darwin and a celebration of evolution? It’s adapt and evolve or die.
Why, the white, homophobic, Christian God, who incidentally does not exist.
Yes, there's a 99-44/100% chance a ship brought the rodent's antecedents.
I had to read it thrice before I realized: that TOTALLY rhymes!
well,second hand smoke killed off all the dinosaurs dontcha know.
Except that there is not such thing as "human-caused" climate change!
Climate change is effected by the Sun. The Sun is outside of the Earth.
Where do these people get the idea that man has anything to do with climate change?
They just made it up! Read Chicken Little, please and then take a vacation or a time out to think very hard about that story. Try to connect the dots.
How do we know the “island ‘ didn’t sink somewhat???
The second mammal to be driven to extinction by global warming will be the independent human scientist with the skeptical mind.
Good. Then we don’t need it. Over 99.9% of all species that have ever inhabited this planet are extinct. Adapt or die.
Cry me a river...
One has to wonder how the mouse survived the last intra glacial warm period. Must be a population these idiots have yet to find.
...a small coral cay just 340m long and 150m wide that's closer to PNG than the Australian mainland.
...the biggest threat is the population size itself. With just a single population of fewer than 50 individuals, genetic inbreeding is likely and could lead (or has already led) to extinction.
On the other hand, The Pacific Green Turtles that breed there may be happy to have a rat free beach
That tower - is that where they placed the rat’s “Darwin Award”?
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