Post #3887

What is the difference between a “normal” and a mass extinction? ✔️ Extinction is a part of life, and animals and plants disappear all the time. ✔️ When a species disappears, scientists say that a species goes extinct. ✔️ From an evolutionary perspective, the role of species that become extinct in the ecosystem is usually filled by new species, or other existing ones. ❗️Earth's 'normal' extinction rate is often thought to be somewhere between 0.1 and 1 species per 10,000 species per 100 years. This is known as the background rate of extinction. ✔️ However, during the history of life on Earth, there have been periods of mass extinction. ❗️A mass extinction event is when species vanish much faster than they are replaced. This is usually defined as about 75% of the world's species being lost in a short period of geological time - less than 2.8 million years. ℹ️ About 98% of all the organisms that have ever existed on our planet are now extinct. Subscribe- t.me/askmenow