Fig. 2. Number of years that would have been required for the observed vertebrate species extinctions in the last 114 years to occur under a background rate of 2 E/MSY.

Red markers, highly conservative scenario; blue markers, conservative scenario. Note that for all vertebrates, the observed extinctions would have taken between 800 to 10,000 years to disappear, assuming 2 E/MSY. Different classes of vertebrates all show qualitatively similar trends.