As species resurrection is entirely new to us, there remain a lot of doubts on the topic. With the possibility of de-extinction rising above the horizon shortly, it is in our hands to make sure if it is a good idea. In Adam Welz’s article, “De-extinction critics at Scientific American have missed the point,” he demonstrates his points that he has enough evidence to prove that skeptics’ claims against the idea of de-extinction have flaws and therefore, we should promote de-extinction. Provided that he has well-supported reasoning, I find the author’s claim credible.
First, Welz’s article is credible because he gives well-supported evidence to back up each of his claims. Case in point, he thinks that “resurrection biology efforts could quite realistically attract donors and
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investors who have never thought of being involved in wildlife conservation before, but are interested in the awesome novelty of bringing things back to life and the impressive (and perhaps impressively profitable) technology involved (Welz).” He uses the California condor project to support his claims which are quite comparable to the de-extinction situation. Moreover, he explains finely how the project is related to the issue. He provides various sources of the project, which confirms the plan had been successful and is, therefore, plausible. Likewise, each of his other arguments is well-founded with evidence and carries weighty points as the cases are closely related to the issue. Therefore, readers would easily find his work to be credible. As people regard The Guardian as a respected newspaper and a trustworthy source, the fact that The Guardian published Welz's article enhances the author's credibility.
To bring the readers to his level of understanding, Welz explains every term that may be new to the reader to avoid any confusions. For example, Welz defined the word "de-extinction" during the start of his writing as the whole point of the article depends on the meaning of the term. The author provides reliable sources to support his points which add plausibility to his article. By way of illustration, Welz uses the journal "Radiocarbon" written by S. L. Vartanyan in 1995 in St. Petersburg State University as a source to support his claim that wooly mammoth had gone extinct forty thousand years ago. This paper was presented at the 15th International Radiocarbon Conference, 15-19 August 1994, Glasgow, Scotland (Vartanyan) which represents that experts had proposed it. Also, the point that he provides the sources to give credit to other researchers deduces that he is a sincere scholar and is fair in his writing. Such collection of substantiated sources shows the sincerity of the author and strengthens the writer’s
credibility. The appealing feature of Welz's article is, he acknowledges his opposition and listens to the critic's persistent opinions which he proves them to be credible. For example, he uses IUCN Red List as the source of evidence for the editor's point, "conservationists face difficult choices about which species and ecosystems to try to save since they cannot hope to rescue them all (The Editors).” This open-mindedness boosts up his credibility. At the same time, he does not agree with them by mentioning that the pessimists had missed the point that they don't realize that the efforts required for resurrection science are similar to the efforts needed for conservation projects of critically endangered species and de-extinction will have a positive instead of a negative effect on the financial needs. Not to mention, he supports these two points with sound evidence. As of data proposed by the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a renowned Wildlife Conservancy project in Kenya, conservationists are trying to bring back the remaining four North White Rhinos. Welz is "not sure why the Scientific American editors endorse new genetic technologies to build the Nile rhinoceros population, but argue against using very similar technologies to bring back other species like the thylacine and the passenger pigeon, species that humans have pushed into extinction within the last century and which could have important roles to play in our ecosystems if brought back (Welz)." I have already provided the reason of credibility of the second point in the first paragraph. As the writer is open-minded and offers various evidence to support his arguments, he is quite credible. As the article is well-supported by reliable sources and plenty of evidence to support his claim, I have confidence in author's credibility. In like manner, the fairness, sincerity, and open-mindedness of the author in his work sums up his honorability. All things considered, there is little to question his credibility.
Martin is confident that the extinctions must have been caused by “something outside the normal experience of mammals.”
The demand for human cadaver research continues to exist. Countless notions have been voiced to augment the supply of human cadavers. Science writer Mary Roach believes that our bodies are of significant importance above ground instead of below. In “The Cadaver Who Joined the Army” Mary Roach primarily focuses on the benefits of human cadaver research and how cadaver donation can be rewarding. Mary Roach bypasses the super-replicator beliefs of human cadaver research and highlights the joy one will receive after donating their body to research. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert primarily focuses on how surrogates pass on super-replicators in which we consider truthful. In “Reporting Live From Tomorrow” Gilbert presumes that e rely on super-replicators to make choices that will determine happiness. As a surrogate, Mary Roach convinces us that through informed consent, our decision to donate our bodies to cadaver research will bring happiness.
In, The Fate of the Earth by, Jonathan Schell, he starts with the extinction of dinosaurs then moves onto how it’s not possible to judge on human extinction. He also talks about how the extinction of animals and how we have learned from our mistakes. He states how we live, then we die. And how different catastrophes could kill everyone or how they could slowly become extinct from those catastrophes. He mainly talks about population and how the extinction of human beings and once we are extinct we are done.
Humans have driven many animals extinct, but should we bring them back is the question. Geneticists, biologists, conservationists and ethicists gathered to discuss the controversies. Some people say in doing this we are playing God, while others say we did by killing them. Other scientist say that it may be beneficial because it will add biodiversity, and medicinal properties back to the ecosystem. It is only possible to bring species back from around 10 thousand years ago. Recently scientists have vastly improved the cloning process. We can now coax adult animal cells into any type of cell, including eggs and sperm, then manipulating them into full-fledged embryos, which has led to the ideas and developments of reviving many other species including mammoths, frogs and
“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs” is written by Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology and zoology at Harvard. This essay is one of more than a hundred articles on evolution, zoology, and paleontology published by Gould in national magazines and journals. It tells about scientific proposals for the extinction of dinosaurs – a confusing but an exciting problem that humanity tries to solve. By analyzing and describing each of the claims for the reptiles’ demise – sex, drugs, and disasters – Gould differentiates bad science from good science and explains what makes some theories silly speculations, while the other, a testable hypothesis.
Fossil records from 12,000 years ago show the appearance of the Large Mammals followed by Paleoindian in Eastern North America. Another piece of the fossil record shows that the appearance of Paleoindian brought about the disappearance of the large mammals. Some people feel that, "there is evidence to suggest that rapacious hunting practice of the paleohunters in North and South America 12,000 years ago may have caused…The demise of the very animals they hunted" (Powell 1987). The evidence Powell suggests is that the extinction of a large mammal is usually followed by the appearance of humans in the fossil record. This coincidence is not only seen in the fossil records of North and South America but Europe and Asia as well. Powell shows that as human populations increased local extinctions of large mammals occurred. This was probably due to the fact that there were not many predators that could hunt the large mammals except man. For this reason it is also highly like likely that man and large mammals did not co-evolve which ultimately resulted in the extinction of large mammals.
For some people the numbers and facts don’t really matter, they read through Manning’s description of extinction and focus on the conclusion he created. Others will focus blindly on the increased extinction rate and rue the day mankind was created. But, there is one group of people who will see “before human domination” (pg. 1) and lose their scientifically accurate minds. Manning is unknowingly referring to the ratio between the background extinction rate and the actual distinction rate, i.e. what scientist think is the extinction rate right now with humans vs. no humans, and referring to it as if it is two completely different rates at two completely different points in time. Small flaws like these are insignificant to the average reader but comparable to kryptonite to credibility from a scientific audiences view. Throughout the essay, these inaccuracies consistently occur, those who know the law of thermodynamics know is not the same as energy transformation in a food-chain and that the scientific method that you simply can’t make conclusions drawn from two different fields of inaccurately portrayed science based on your opinion and call it
The question of what caused the extinction of megafauna during the Late Pleistocene period is one that archaeologists have struggled to answer for decades, but why should it matter? Discovering with certainty the cause of megafaunal extinction would simultaneously prove or disprove any of the proposed implications of each existing theory regarding this massive extinction.
The re-wilding of North America is basically a conservation strategy (Donlan 2005), aimed at restoring the Pleistocene era (Donlan 2005, Rubenstein et al. 2006). This could be achieved by reintroducing African and Asian megafauna, these species are phylogenetically known to be direct descendents of the extinct Pleistocene species or animals of similar taxa (Donlan 2005, Rubenstein et al. 2006). Re-populating North America is essential for both ecological and evolutionary potential (Donlan 2005) and also economic gain (Donlan 2005, Rubenstein et al. 2006). In this paper I will be discussing the main arguments presented by two papers regarding the Pleistocene North America re-wilding. The first paper is written by Donlan (2005), it is a commentary paper in which he proposes the plan of re-wilding North America based on his opinions. The second paper is by Rubenstein et al. (2006), it is a research paper where he outlines some facts contrary to Donlan (2005)’s paper, unlike Donlan (2005)‘s paper his arguments were supported by variety of recent Scientific published papers which are relevant to the topic discussed.
...be brought to light. In the next thirty years, one fifth of all species will become extinct and in the next one hundred years, 50% of all species will be extinct. This is a staggering statistic and the horror of this is that one species, the human, is the cause of this mass extinction.
Long-term survival of a species depends on its ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions (Murphy, 1994). Genetic diversity within a species, which has taken 3.5 billion years to evolve, makes adaptations to these changing environments possible. Unfortunately, the rate of extinction of genetically diverse organisms is rapidly increasing, thus reducing this needed biodiversity, largely due to the human impacts of development and expansion. What was an average of one extinction per year before is now one extinction per hour and extinct species numbers are expected to reach approximately one million by the year 2000 (WWW site, Bio 65). As a result governmental and societal action must be taken immediately!
For example, chapter 4 brings up the question of how much Homo Sapiens played a role in the extinction of most of the large marsupial mammals in Australia. The evidence is presented that, after Homo Sapiens arrived on the continent of Australia, “of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing 100 pounds or more, twenty-three became extinct” (65). This is the type of evidence that cannot be disputed. It is a literal fact that certain areas with large mammal populations experienced a decrease in those populations upon the arrival of Homo Sapiens. Thus it is posited that humans have been a strong antagonist to other species for many thousands of
Unlike the previous mass extinctions that were due to natural phenomena’s, the 6th mass extinction is due to human influence.
De-extinction is the process of bringing back extinct species. The articles “should we bring back extinct species” by joseph Bennett, “last of his kind, “and” we might soon resurrect extinct species is it worth the cost?” by Steph Yin, they all explore the idea of de-extinction. Scientists should not be allowed to bring back extinct species because de-extinction is too expensive and it could harm the ecosystem.
A number of different theories have been assessed throughout the course of this research to attempt to reach a conclusion as to the reason behind the extinction of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Although all arguments are credible, and supportive with educated information and data, the most conclusive theory of all is The Alvarez Asteroid Impact theory.