More On Extinction

Coincidentally, I saw an article in Newsweek this morning that echos my last post.

Polish physicist Adam Lipowski, after working up a computer model of evolution, noticed that "genetic mutations, accumulating over millennia, regularly produce 'superpredators' - killers so powerful that they destroy the entire food chain, including themselves."

"Who were the Earth's great superpredators? Scientists aren't sure, and Lipowski says that looks can be deceiving. 'For all we know, it could be a bacterium,' he says. 'It doesn't have to eat all the other species - it just has to change the equilibrium.'

"That sounds familiar to conservationists, many of whom believe that humans are superpredators. Lipowski is cagey ('We can not implement human beings in our model'), but he is willing to say which species might flourish after the next big extinction - and it's not us. 'It will be something very different, something currently considered very poorly adapted,' he says. So another maxim might become scientific truth: the meek shall inherit the earth."

But don't worry. the average mass extinction appears to occur every 26 million years, which means we've got about 10 million years to continue overfishing and destroying the ozone layer.

Besides, we'll all be Raptured out of our panties before that happens, right?