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Environment & Energy

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Eugene

(61,595 posts)
Tue Jun 14, 2016, 07:24 AM Jun 2016

Revealed: first mammal species wiped out by human-induced climate change [View all]

Source: The Guardian



Revealed: first mammal species wiped out by human-induced climate change

Exclusive: scientists find no trace of the Bramble Cay melomys, a small
rodent that was the only mammal endemic to Great Barrier Reef


Michael Slezak
Tuesday 14 June 2016 04.44 BST

Human-caused climate change appears to have driven the Great Barrier Reef’s only endemic mammal species into the history books, with the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lives on a tiny island in the eastern Torres Strait, being completely wiped-out from its only known location.

It is also the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change.

An expert says this extinction is likely just the tip of the iceberg, with climate change exerting increasing pressures on species everywhere.

The rodent, also called the mosaic-tailed rat, was only known to live on Bramble Cay a small coral cay, just 340m long and 150m wide off the north coast of Queensland, Australia, which sits at most 3m above sea level.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/14/first-case-emerges-of-mammal-species-wiped-out-by-human-induced-climate-change

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