One of the most well-known global extinctions, made famous by numerous sci-fi novels and movies, would probably be the dying out of the dinosaurs more or less 65 million years ago.

Today, evidence suggests that the trend of another impending mass extinction is slowly becoming a reality. This is based from the fossil records examined by the universities of York and Leeds.

The matching data sets of marine and terrestrial against climate temperature suggests that global biodiversity is relatively low during warm "greenhouse" phases and more extinctions occur during those periods, while the reverse is true in cooler "ice house" phases.

The research was published by University of York student Gareth Jenkins and University of Leeds Professor Tim Benton in the latest issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Both researchers are noted population ecologists in their field. Dr. Mayhew had this to say about the results of their research:

Our results provide the first clear evidence that global climate may explain substantial variation in the fossil record in a simple and consistent manner. If our results hold for current warming - the magnitude of which is comparable with the long-term fluctuations in Earth climate - they suggest that extinctions will increase.