EXTINCTION

Extinction
• Species diversity today = speciation – extinction
• The majority of species that have ever lived are
now extinct
• Estimates put the current animal and plant
diversity at 2 – 5 percent of the historic total.
• Such calculations rely on historic evidence for
species diversity and longevity
• Data most reliably gleaned for marine
invertebrates that have the most complete fossil
record
 Extinction
• Charles Darwin
• assumed that extinction is the natural outcome
of competition between newly evolved,
adaptively superior species and their older,
more primitive ancestors
• historically, extinction was thought to result
from evolution
Species Extinction
 Causes of Extinction
• Natural
selection
• Dramatic
environmental
change
Causes of Extinction
Causes of Extinction
 Natural Extinction
• Natural fate
of all species
is extinction
Natural Extinction
• Extinction may mean:
• Species evolves that will
• Total loss as a eventually become so different
species dies out to the ancestral species
 Natural Extinction
• Modes of extinction (David Raup – American scientist)
1. Field of bullets – describes random extinction
unrelated to relative fitness of species (the name
stems from an analogy of soldiers advancing
across a battlefield being mown down at random)
2. Fair game – selective losses of less fit species,
the classical Darwinian survival of the better
adapted
3. Wanton extinction – selective of species but not
related to relative fitness or adaptation to
environment
Background
vs. Mass
Extinctions
 Mass Extinction
• term mass extinction refers to any episode of multiple
loss of species
• 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
 Mass Extinction
• 1st global extinction
• occurred about 440 million years ago in the Ordovician
Period
• all animals and plants on Earth still lived in the ocean
• More than 85 percent of the species became extinct,
including many families of invertebrate marine animals
• Possible causes
• Climate change (from warm to supercold)
• Supernova explosion (causing too much UV radiation)
 Mass Extinction
• 2nd global extinction
• took place about 360 million years ago, near the end of
the Devonian Period
• 82 percent of all species were lost
• Animals and plants now lived on land as well as in the
sea
• greatest extinctions affected marine animals
• Cause: Climate change associated with the
development of glaciers on a giant southern continent
may have been the main cause
 Mass Extinction
• 3rd global extinction
• greatest mass extinction to date occurred 251 million years
ago at the end of the Permian Period
• 96 percent of all species in the oceans and 70 percent of all
species on land were lost
• Causes :
• series of events that began with massive volcanic eruptions in
Siberia
• gases released included the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide,
which caused the atmosphere to heat up. The oceans eventually
warmed
• Methane trapped as icy hydrates on the seafloor may have been
released into the atmosphere
• Low oxygen
 Mass Extinction
• 4th global extinction
• 200 million years ago at the end of the Triassic Period
• mass extinction claimed 76 percent of the species alive at the time
• Primitive fishlike animals called conodonts disappeared from the
seas
• species of amphibians and reptiles on land also died out, including
a number of groups of archosaurs, advanced reptiles that included
dinosaurs
• dinosaurs themselves managed to survive the mass extinction and
went on to become the dominant animals on land for another 140
million years
• Causes:
• The giant supercontinent Pangaea began to break up at the time
• Volcanoes and climate change may have contributed to the extinctions
 Mass Extinction
• 5th global extinction
• most recent mass extinction occurred about 65 million
years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period
• 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 an asteroid struck
Earth.
• They believe the impact created a dust cloud that
blocked much of the sunlight—seriously altering global
temperatures and disrupting photosynthesis
Mass Extinction