Extinction (biology)

I INTRODUCTION

Extinction (biology), the end of existence of a group of organisms, caused by their inability

to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Extinction affects individual species—that
is, groups of interbreeding organisms—as well as collections of related species, such as
members of the same family, order, or class (see Classification). The dodo, for example, a
species of flightless pigeon formerly living on the island of Mauritius, became extinct in
1665. About 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, the most of the woolly mammoths and the last of
the mastodons, both members of the elephant family, died. And about 245 million years
ago at the end of the Paleozoic Era, an entire class of primitive marine animals called
trilobites disappeared forever.

Fossils, the remains of prehistoric plants and animals buried and preserved in sedimentary

rock or trapped in amber or other deposits of ancient organic matter, provide a record of
the history of life on Earth. Scientists who study this fossil record, called paleontologists,
have learned that extinction is a natural and ongoing phenomenon. In fact, of the hundreds
of millions of species that have lived on Earth over the past 3.8 billion years, more than 99
percent are already extinct. Some of this happens as the natural result of competition
between species and is known as natural selection. According to natural selection, living
things must compete for food and space. They must evade the ravages of predators and
disease while dealing with unpredictable shifts in their environment. Those species
incapable of adapting are faced with imminent extinction. This constant rate of extinction,
sometimes called background extinction, is like a slowly ticking clock. First one species,
then another becomes extinct, and new species appear almost at random as geological
time goes by. Normal rates of background extinction are usually about five families of
organisms lost per million years.

More recently, paleontologists have discovered that not all extinction is slow and gradual.
At various times in the fossil record, many different, unrelated species became extinct at
nearly the same time. The cause of these large-scale extinctions is always dramatic
environmental change that produces conditions too severe for organisms to endure.
Environmental changes of this caliber result from extreme climatic change, such as the
global cooling observed during the ice ages, or from catastrophic events, such as meteorite
impacts or widespread volcanic activity. Whatever their causes, these events dramatically
alter the composition of life on Earth, as entire groups of organisms disappear and entirely
new groups rise to take their place.

II MASS EXTINCTIONS

 In its most general sense, the term mass extinction refers to any episode of multiple loss
of species. But the term is generally reserved for truly global extinction events—events in
which extensive species loss occurs in all ecosystems on land and in the sea, affecting
every part of the Earth's surface. Scientists recognize five such mass extinctions in the past
500 million years. The first occurred around 438 million years ago in the Ordovician Period.
At this time, more than 85 percent of the species on Earth became extinct. The second
took place 367 million years ago, near the end of the Devonian Period, when 82 percent of
all species were lost. The third and greatest mass extinction to date occurred 245 million
years ago at the end of the Permian Period. In this mass extinction, as many as 96 percent
of all species on Earth were lost. The devastation was so great that paleontologists use this
event to mark the end of the ancient, or Paleozoic Era, and the beginning of the middle, or
Mesozoic Era, when many new groups of animals evolved.

About 208 million years ago near the end of the Triassic Period, the fourth mass extinction
claimed 76 percent of the species alive at the time, including many species of amphibians
and reptiles. The fifth and most recent mass extinction occurred about 65 million years ago
at the end of the Cretaceous Period and resulted in the loss of 76 percent of all species,
most notably the dinosaurs.

Many geologists and paleontologists speculate that this fifth mass extinction occurred

when one or more meteorites struck the Earth. They believe the impact created a dust
cloud that blocked much of the sunlight—seriously altering global temperatures and
disrupting photosynthesis, the process by which plants derive energy. As plants died,
organisms that relied on them for food also disappeared. Supporting evidence for this
theory comes from a buried impact crater in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Measured at
200 km (124 mi) in diameter, this huge crater is thought to be the result of a large
meteorite striking the Earth. A layer of the element iridium in the geologic sediment from
this time provides additional evidence. Unusual in such quantities on Earth, iridium is
common in extraterrestrial bodies, and theory supporters suggest iridium traveled to Earth
on a meteorite.

Other scientists suspect that widespread volcanic activity in what is now India and the
Indian Ocean may have been the source of the atmospheric gases and dust that blocked
sunlight. Ancient volcanoes could have been the source of the unusually high levels of
iridium, and advocates of this theory point out that iridium is still being released today by
at least one volcano in the Indian Ocean. No matter what the cause, the extinction at the
end of the Cretaceous Period was so great that scientists use this point in time to divide
the Mesozoic Era (also called the Age of Reptiles) from the Cenozoic Era (otherwise known
as the Age of Mammals).

III ROLE OF MASS EXTINCTION IN EVOLUTION

Historically biologists—most famous among them British naturalist Charles Darwin—

assumed that extinction is the natural outcome of competition between newly evolved,
adaptively superior species and their older, more primitive ancestors. These scientists
believed that newer, more highly evolved species simply drove less well-adapted species
to extinction. That is, historically, extinction was thought to result from evolution. It was
also thought that this process happens in a slow and regular manner and occurs at
different times in different groups of organisms.
In the case of background extinction, this holds true. An average of three species becomes
extinct every million years, usually as a result of the forces of natural selection. When this
happens, new species—differing only slightly from the organisms that disappeared—rise to
take their places, creating evolutionary lineages of related species. The modern horse, for
example, comes from a long evolutionary lineage of related, but now extinct, species. The
earliest known horse had four toes on its front feet, three toes on its rear feet, and weighed
just 36 kg (80 lb). About 45 million years ago, this horse became extinct. It was succeeded
by other types of horses with slightly different characteristics, such as teeth better shaped
for eating different plants, which made them better suited to their environments. This
pattern of extinction and the ensuing rise of related species continued over the course of
55 million years, ultimately resulting in the modern horse and its relatives the zebras and
asses.

In mass extinctions, entire groups of species—such as families, orders, and classes—die

out, creating opportunities for the survivors to exploit new habitats. In their new niches, the
survivors evolve new characteristics and habits and, consequently, develop into entirely
new species. What this course of events means is that mass extinctions are not the result
of the evolution of new species, but actually a cause of evolution. Fossils from periods of
mass extinction indicate that most new species evolve after waves of extinction. Mass
extinctions cause periodic spurts of evolutionary change that shake up the dynamics of life
on Earth.

This is perhaps best demonstrated in the development of our own ancestors, the early

mammals. Before the fall of the dinosaurs, which had dominated Earth for more than 150
million years, mammals were small, nocturnal, and secretive. They devoted much of their
time and energy to evading meat-eating dinosaurs. With the extinction of dinosaurs, the
remaining mammals moved into habitats and ecological niches previously dominated by
the dinosaurs. Over the next 200 million years, those early mammals evolved into a wide
variety of species, assuming many ecological roles and rising to dominate the Earth as the
dinosaurs had before them.

IV THE CURRENT EXTINCTION CRISIS

Most scientists agree that life on Earth is now faced with the most severe extinction
episode since the event that drove the dinosaurs extinct. No one knows exactly how many
species are being lost because no one knows exactly how many species exist on Earth.
Estimates vary, but the most widely accepted figure lies between 10 and 13 million
species. Of these, biologists estimate that as many as 27,000 species are becoming extinct
each year. This translates into an astounding 3 species every hour.

Instead of global climate change, humans are the cause of this latest mass extinction. With
the invention of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, humans began destroying the world's
terrestrial ecosystems to produce farmland. Today pollution destroys ecosystems even in
remote deserts and in the world’s deepest oceans. In addition, we have cleared forests for
lumber, pulp, and firewood. We have harvested the fish and shellfish of the world's largest
lakes and oceans in volumes that make it impossible for populations to recover fast enough
to meet our harvesting needs. And everywhere we go, whether on purpose or by accident,
we have brought along species that disrupt local ecosystems and, in many cases, drive
native species extinct. For instance, Nile perch were intentionally introduced to Lake
Victoria for commercial fishing in 1959. This fish proved to be an efficient predator, driving
200 rare species of cichlid fishes to extinction.

This sixth extinction, as it has come to be known, poses a great threat to our continued

existence on the planet. As the sum of all species living in the world's ecosystems, known
as biodiversity, dwindles, so too go many of the resources on which we depend. Humans
use at least 40,000 different plant, animal, fungi, bacteria, and virus species for food,
clothing, shelter, and medicines. In addition, the fresh air we breathe, the water we drink,
cook, and wash with, and the many chemical cycles—including the nitrogen cycle and the
carbon cycle, so vital to sustain life—depend on the continued health of ecosystems and
the species within them.

The list of victims of the sixth extinction grows by the year. Forever lost are the penguinlike
great auk, the passenger pigeon, the zebralike quagga, the thylacine, the Balinese tiger,
the ostrichlike moa, and the tarpan, a small species of wild horse, to name but a few. More
than 1,000 plants and animals are threatened by extinction. Each of these organisms has
unique attributes—some of which may hold the secrets to increasing world food supplies,
eradicating water pollution, or curing disease. A subspecies of the endangered
chimpanzee, for example, has recently been identified as the probable origin of the human
immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
(AIDS). But these animals are widely hunted in their west African habitat, and just as
researchers learn of their significance to the AIDS epidemic, the animals face extinction. If
they become extinct, they will take with them many of the secrets surrounding this
devastating disease.

V SPECIES CONSERVATION

In the United States, legislation to protect endangered species from impending extinction

includes the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), established in 1975, enforces the
prohibition of trading of threatened plants and animals between countries. The Convention
on Biological Diversity, an international treaty developed in 1992 at the United Nations
Conference on the Environment and Development, obligates more than 160 countries to
take action to protect plant and animal species.

Scientists meanwhile are intensifying their efforts to describe the species of the world. So

far biologists have identified and named around 1.75 million species—a mere fraction of
the species believed to exist today. Of those identified, special attention is given to species
at or near the brink of extinction. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) maintains an active
list of endangered plants and animals called the Red List. In addition, captive breeding
programs at zoos and private laboratories are dedicated to the preservation of endangered
species. Participants in these programs breed members of different populations of
endangered species in an effort to increase their genetic diversity, thus enabling the
species to better cope with further threats to their numbers.

All these programs together have had some notable successes. The peregrine falcon,

nearly extinct in the United States due to the widespread use of the pesticide DDT,
rebounded strongly after DDT was banned in 1973. The brown pelican and the bald eagle
offer similar success stories. The California condor, a victim of habitat destruction, was
bred in captivity, and small numbers of them are now being released back into the wild.

Growing numbers of legislators and conservation biologists, scientists who specialize in

preserving and nurturing biodiversity, are realizing that the primary cause of the current
wave of extinction is habitat destruction. Efforts have accelerated to identify ecosystems at
greatest risk, including those with high numbers of critically endangered species. Programs
to set aside large tracts of habitats, often interconnected by narrow zones or corridors,
offer the best hope yet of sustaining ecosystems, and thereby the majority of the world's
species (see National Parks and Preserves).

Reviewed By:
Eugenie C. Scott

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