Extinction Event of Species

Being uncertain as to how plenty of species they share planet Earth with has a considerable number of consequences. of these consequences is that if they don't know what they are beginning with it is hard to calculate current extinction rates. of the authors of this new study, published in an online scientific journal commented that the recently updated Red List issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature assessed 59,508 species, of which 19,625 are classified as threatened. This means the Red List, the most sophisticated continuous analysis of extinction rates, monitors less than 1% of world species.

One of the intriguing aspects of this new research, is that it used the hierarchical classification of organisms first proposed by the 18th Century Swedish physician Carolus Linnaeus to calculate the total number of species. In simple terms, the international team of scientists looked at the known members of the Linnaean Hierarchy from the Eukarya Domain right down to species level and used statistical analysis to fill in the gaps to produce their final figures. Their study reveals that some 86% of all terrestrial species and about 91% of all marine species await formal scientific description.

Palaeontologists studying the fossil record are aware that the history of life on our planet has experienced a considerable number of "booms" and "busts", mass extinction events alongside a background level of extinctions and a gradual level of new species origination. In the work of the whole Phanerozoic Eon, the period of visible life that extends from about 545 million years ago to the present there's been major mass extinction events. The most famous of these is the Cretaceous mass extinction that occurred around sixty-five million years ago and resulted in the demise of the dinosaurs. With this new assessment of the biodiversity of Earth scientists can use this knowledge as the basis on which to establish current extinction events. Here is the bad news, plenty of biologists now think that at this time they live through a sixth mass extinction event, with as plenty of as species an hour going extinct. That is 26,280 species dying out every year. What is worse the rate of species destruction appears to be increasing, definitely over the last forty years or so.

The causes for this extinction, whether human influenced or not, are not going to matter in the long-term. Those organisms at the top of the food chain, apex predators such as ourselves for example tend to be the most vulnerable. They primates had better enjoy ourselves whilst they can as they may not be around much longer.