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“Given how much of the matter out of which we formed may have come from other galaxies, we could consider ourselves space travelers or extragalactic immigrants. It is likely that much of the Milky Way's matter was in other galaxies before it was kicked out by a powerful wind, traveled across intergalactic space and eventually found its new home in the Milky Way.” Daniel Anglés-Alcázar, a postdoctoral fellow in Northwestern's astrophysics center, said.

“This study transforms our understanding of how galaxies formed from the Big Bang. What this new mode implies is that up to one-half of the atoms around us – including in the solar system, on Earth and in each one of us – comes not from our own galaxy but from other galaxies, up to one million light years away.” said Faucher-Giguère, a co-author of the study.

“Our origins are much less local than we previously thought. This study gives us a sense of how things around us are connected to distant objects in the sky.” said Faucher-Giguère, a CIERA member.

"This is the case of a biological annihilation occurring globally, even if the species these populations belong to are still present somewhere on Earth," Rodolfo Dirzo, the study's co-author and a Stanford University biology professor, said in a news release.

"Thus, we emphasise that the sixth mass extinction is already here and the window for effective action is very short, probably two or three decades at most. All signs point to ever more powerful assaults on biodiversity in the next two decades, painting a dismal picture of the future of life, including human life." the authors wrote.

"The massive loss of populations and species reflects our lack of empathy to all the wild species that have been our companions since our origins. It is a prelude to the disappearance of many more species and the decline of natural systems that make civilisation possible." the study's lead author, Gerardo Ceballos, an ecology professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico, said in the news release.

"It's a little bit dramatic," Pimm said. "Yes, we are driving species to extinction a thousand times faster than we should. So yes, there is a problem. But on the other hand, telling people that we're all doomed and going to die isn't terribly helpful."

"Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don't have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were. It is absolutely critical to recognise that I am NOT claiming that humans haven't done great damage to marine and terrestrial, nor that many extinctions have not occurred and more will certainly occur in the near future. But I do think that as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons." he told The Atlantic last month.

"What they show is it's a mass, global phenomenon," Suckling said. "I think they made the case very strongly that we are right now in the sixth extinction, and if we continue the trend we're on, we're going to be looking at 50 to 75 percent of our species lost over the next hundred years."

"The study is right in raising alarm bells .. especially with our change in climate," Greenwald said. "We really need to protect as much habitat as we can now. Our population continues to expand, our consumption continues to expand. We're going in the wrong direction, quickly."

"We've dramatically increased the area protected by national parks, increased the area of the oceans that's being protected. We have reduced deforestation rate in the Amazon," Pimm said. "I'm not trying to say that it's all good news, but there's good news out there."

"Because once they go on endangered species list, they go from neglect or maybe tacit management to very active, focused efforts to save them. And those work. The good news here is that once humans decide to save individual species - and we're quite good at it - we can actually reverse this negative trend." Suckling said.