Some scientists estimate that up to half of presently existing plant and animal species may become extinct by 2100.
Most species that become extinct are never scientifically documented. Only recently have extinctions been recorded and scientists have become alarmed at the current high rate of extinctions. Mass extinctions are relatively rare events however, isolated extinctions of species and clades are quite common, and are a natural part of the evolutionary process. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance, although some species, called living fossils, survive with little to no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years.
The relationship between animals and their ecological niches has been firmly established. Through evolution, species arise through the process of speciation-where new varieties of organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecological niche-and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, mammoths, ground sloths, thylacines, trilobites, and golden toads. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. A taxon may become functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to reproduce and recover. Extinction is the termination of a taxon by the death of its last member.
0 kommentar(er)
