The "Revivre" exhibition, at the National Museum of Natural History, offers visitors the opportunity to meet extinct species thanks to augmented reality.

A project presented Friday on Europe 1 by Bruno David, the president of the Museum, which raises awareness and alerts on the dangers of the disappearance of biodiversity.

INTERVIEW

On the occasion of the "Revivre" exhibition, which virtually brings extinct species back to life, Bruno David, president of the National Museum of Natural History and author of the book

À dawn de la 6e extinction

(Grasset) was the guest from Europe 1, Friday.

Thanks to technology and augmented reality glasses, the Museum is bringing eleven extinct species back to life.

The opportunity to dream, but also to become aware of the danger that lurks: that of a mass extinction, of which man could ultimately be the main victim if he does not act quickly to preserve the planet and its biodiversity. .

>> Find the morning show of the day in replay and podcast here

All these species have disappeared because of man

Quagga, large saber-toothed tiger, dodo ... The animals presented "correspond a lot to extinct or endangered species", explains Bruno David. "There is one that I like a lot, it's the traveling pie, a kind of pigeon. There were several billion individuals in North America in the 19th century and we managed to kill them all", continues the president of the National Museum of Natural History.

What do all these species have in common? They have disappeared because of man, points out Bruno David, evoking hunting, overfishing and overexploitation of resources. Very current phenomena which pose the threat of a sixth great extinction, with the disappearance of common species of birds or insects. "I am very worried about what forms the basis of the functioning of ecosystems and biodiversity on Earth," he says.

And if the disappearance of certain species corresponds to a cyclical process, just like the flows of appearance, Bruno David nevertheless adds that "we are causing extinctions and declines of species at a speed which is much higher. as quickly as possible ".

This means that we make species disappear in a few centuries or decades, while the emergence of a new species in an evolutionary dynamic takes around 10,000 or 100,000 years.

"We see that there is a speed differential that makes you turn off faster than you make it appear."

"Life will continue to exist on Earth, whether man is present or not"

In

At the dawn of the 6th extinction

(Grasset), Bruno David warns of a new great mass extinction. If there have already been five before, the sixth stands out because it is the first time that a species - the human - is at the origin of a possible mass extinction which represents above all a threat to itself. Indeed, if nature self-regulates when a predator takes up too much space, humans could very quickly suffer. “Nature always works as a game of balance and interactions,” he says. "From the moment a species dominates too much, it shows itself to be the potential target of pathogens, and this is a little bit what is happening to us at the moment", continues Bruno David, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Moreover, he says he is much more worried for humanity than for the planet. "Life will continue to exist on Earth, whether man is present or not," he says. Despite the technologies that we are developing, the pharmacopoeia we have at our disposal, "we are a relatively fragile species. We have the impression of being very protected, but we still see what a virus can do" , he continues, believing that this should lead us to think more. "Our complexity makes us fragile and we have to be careful: we could be one of the species that will disappear during the next extinction."