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Some 300 wild mammal species in Asia, Africa and Latin America are being driven to extinction by humanity's voracious appetite for bushmeat, according to a world-first assessment. The species at risk range from rats to rhinoceros, and include docile, ant-eating pangolins as well as flesh-ripping big cats. The findings, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, are evidence of a “global crisis” for warm-blooded land animals, 15 top conservation scientists concluded. “Terrestrial mammals are experiencing a massive collapse in their population sizes and geographical ranges around the world,” the study warned. This decline, it said, was part of a “mass extinction event,” only the sixth time in half a billion years that Earth's species are dying out at more than 1000 times the usual rate. According to the Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of endangered species, a quarter of 4556 land mammals assessed are on the road to annihilation. extract minerals, causing large flakes too fly off which resemble those which were considered to be distinctively human. Previously archaeologists believed the flakes could only be made through a process called “stone-knapping” where a larger rock is selected and hammered with another stone to produce sharp blade-like slithers for use as arrows, spears or knives. The flakes were thought to represent a turning point in human evolution because they demonstrated planning, cognition and hand manipulation that cannot be achieved by other animals. But the new research suggests that flakes can be made without any such foresight. The research was published in Nature.