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Niles Eldredge Quotes

born 1943 United States

Niles Eldredge (born August 25, 1943) is an American biologist and paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972.

United States
Biologists
Paleontologists

Also known as: Eldredge, Niles

Random Niles Eldredge quote

4 quotes

Agriculture represents the single most profound ecological change in the entire 3.5 billion-year history of life.

There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past.

This explosion of human population, especially in the post-Industrial Revolution years of the past two centuries, coupled with the unequal distribution and consumption of wealth on the planet, is the underlying cause of the Sixth Extinction.

Indeed, to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems — converting land to produce one or two food crops, with all other native plant species all now classified as unwanted 'weeds' — and all but a few domesticated species of animals now considered as pests.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Niles Eldredge (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.