Too hot for a lizard? Climate change quickens the pace of extinction
BISBEE, Ariz. — Boots dusty, lungs heaving, Dr. John Wiens searched the boulders of a desolate Arizona mountaintop for the last survivors of a 3-million-year-old lizard population — then said the words that both confirmed his life's work and broke his heart.
"They're not there," he said. "It seems like the species is now extinct."
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The loss of plant and animal species on Earth is happening at a speed never seen in human history, according to the United Nations. That includes the likely extinction of the lizards Wiens has studied for 10 years — the population of Yarrow's spiny lizards found in the Mule Mountains of southern Arizona.
"There's a lot of species on Earth, and we're going to lose a lot of them because of climate change," said Weins, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. "It's catastrophic."
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