the extinction of The Northern wide-mouth Rhino you could watch. In March, the last living male specimen died. Sudan was his Name, he is survived by his daughter and his granddaughter. Continue plant. the two not more Thus, the species is considered technically extinct.
That species extinction is part of Evolution. As well as the Emergence of new species: there are Always tiny differences between parents and offspring. Over many generations, these differences add up, to new features. May the new properties give their owners advantages – may sometime, so many that eventually, new species.
The tree of life, a new branch grows. Over longer time, it can be a tree Branch. From him, new branches will sprout again. So can close the gaps that the extinct species left. The crown remains dense. The balance between the lost and new species can recover. At least in theory.
But how long would it take to get the diversity of mammals on the earth, until man started to tire in the nature of the catchment, is restored? This question prompted evolutionary biologists from Scandinavia to a model calculation.
The result, of the researchers working with Matt Davis of the University of Aarhus in the journal “PNAS”, is sobering: more Than 300 species of mammals were exterminated by people in the past 130,000 years ago. Their formation took a total of more than 2.5 billion years of evolutionary history. More than 1200 other species today are considered endangered and could become extinct in the coming decades. However, the lost variety of produce, according to the researchers, it would take several millions of years of Regeneration.
The researchers calculated how long it took for the now extinct species had been created in the root of the tree of life. And they calculated how long it would take to get an equivalent diversity would be restored. They were already extinct species and extinction in the next 50 years most likely.
The loss of some of the types of impacts of this bill have a greater impact than the other – because these species differ particularly from the other. In the root of the tree of life, they do not form branches, but all Branches. So a Branch is cut, would need to be longer Grow.
A tragic, but relatively low loss of about the extinction of the South American would be three finger-Dwarf sloths. Because there are other sloth species, from which it differs in evolutionary biology, little is lost by its end to a comparatively low diversity.
From the once-great elephant-Ast life, however, today only two species. You die, you lose a lot more variety. Her loss would weigh, therefore, the bill heavier. It is, therefore, useful, the researchers write, to concentrate protective measures on species evolution are biologically particularly exceptional. But also, that they could not estimate, what are the consequences of the extinction of a species for an entire Ecosystem.
Even if you could remove all factors that are pushing endangered species to the brink of extinction, at a stroke, it would take three to five million years, until the previously lost diversity would be restored.
But no protection measure can ever be successful. And even if in fifty years, no protective measures for mammals would be more needed, it would take five to seven million years, to the former variety would return.
but this is purely hypothetical. It is important now is to save what can still be saved. The study shows impressively that you can not watch the emergence of species other than their eradication.
