[supersaibal]
Originariamente inviato da GattoBastardo
fonte
http://education.guardian.co.uk/high...496844,00.html
"Fossil records show that around every 26m years, a mass extinction occurs on Earth, wiping out millions of species and leaving only a few hardy survivors.
Many scientists have blamed these regular catastrophic culls on meteorite bombardments. But now a paper in Physical Review E suggests that the cause could lie much closer to home.
Adam Lipowski, a physicist from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, has developed a computer model which shows that periodic mass extinctions could be caused by the evolution of a "super-predator". Most of the time, the model is populated by medium efficiency predators, but every so often genetic mutations lead to the evolution of a highly efficient beast.
"This super-predator is a fast-consuming species and it quickly decimates the population of preys, which in turn leads to its own decline," he explains. Any creatures that survive this destruction gradually mutate to fill the new ecological niches and the cycle starts afresh.
So are humans the latest super-predator? "It is the feeling that we have, but our model is too abstract to say this for sure," says Lipowski. "
Stavolta il super predatore potremmo essere noi
VVoVe: [/supersaibal]