They say extinction is the only real certainty. Species are constantly blinking in and out of existence. This may or may not be of concern depending on your scale of interest. In 2007 we're doing all sorts of things to pillage and plunder life on this incarnation of planet earth, but of course 2007 is a rather arbitrary number.. for even if space and time do exist, who's counting and to what end? In any event, I do remain interested in the here and now because that's where I live. You do too. So it's worth taking note when Biological Letters reports the first probable human-caused extinction of a cetacean species: The Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji.
We are forced to conclude that the baiji is now likely to be extinct, probably due to unsustainable by-catch in local fisheries. This represents the first global extinction of a large ...
