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Alarming rise in acid levels threaten world’s oceans and marine species

On Monday, Science Daily reported about an international team of scientists that have been comparing the current conditions in the world's oceans with historical and fossil records, and are seeing an alarming connection.

The article, titled Extinctions in ancient and modern seas, has been published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution and discusses the relationships between past mass extinctions and the conditions of today's oceans.

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According to the article, of the five largest extinctions that have happened in the last 500 million years, three of those were caused by climate change and ocean acidification, with the other two reportedly due to pollution, oxygen loss from seawaters, loss of habitat and human activity.

Besides climate change, acid acidification is one of the biggest problems we face due to carbon dioxide emissions. The oceans take up roughly half of what human activity pumps into the atmosphere, and the rising levels of carbonic acid in the water threaten the survival of marine species.

"We wanted to understand what had driven past extinctions of sea life and see how much of those conditions prevailed today," said co-author Professor John Pandolfi, of the University of Queensland, according to Science Daily.

"It is very useful to look back in time -- because if you forget your history, you're liable to repeat it."

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