Year: 2022

LUMPY RIDE. “The diversity of organismic form has evolved nonuniformly during the history of life.” https://lnkd.in/e4G_gYd View in LinkedIn

FIVE MAJOR EXTINCTIONS have occurred during earth’s history. They are worth citing in order to show the massive scales of species loss at each event. https://lnkd.in/eRVF2gw View in LinkedIn

EXTINCTION #1. End of the Ordovician: 440 million years ago, 86% of all species lost. https://lnkd.in/efCSXC8 View in LinkedIn

EXTINCTION #2. Late Devonian: 375 million years ago, 75% of species lost, https://lnkd.in/efCSXC8 View in LinkedIn

EXTINCTION #3. End of the Permian, "The Great Dying": 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost. https://lnkd.in/efCSXC8 View in LinkedIn

EXTINCTION #4. End of the Triassic: 200 million years ago, 80% of species lost. https://lnkd.in/efCSXC8 View in LinkedIn

EXTINCTION #5. End of the Cretaceous: 66 million years ago, 76% of species lost. https://lnkd.in/efCSXC8 View in LinkedIn

POSSIBLE EXTINCTION #6. “A large proportion of existing species — possibly half, conceivably even more — may be lost within the foreseeable future.” The cause: man. https://lnkd.in/eyRBipn View in LinkedIn

PERILOUS BOTTLENECKS. “Analysis of extinctions in the Late Permian indicates that as many as 96 percent of all marine species may have died out, thus forcing the marine biosphere to pass through a small bottleneck.” https://lnkd.in/ecZCYp9 View in LinkedIn

THE FEW CONTINUING SEEDS. “Mass extinctions have never entirely reset the evolutionary clock: even the huge losses at the end of the Permian, which appear to have permanently restructured marine and terrestrial communities, left enough taxa and functional groups standing to seed the recovery process without the origin of new phyla.” https://lnkd.in/epHhn4i) View in LinkedIn