extinction
Sign in to savethumb|The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) is an example of a recently extinct [[species.]] thumb|Palaeotherium is an example of an extinct [[genus that is only recorded from fossil records before the existence of hominids.]]
AI overview
Extinction is when a species or group of organisms completely disappears and no longer exists anywhere on Earth, like the thylacine that died out in recent times or ancient creatures like Palaeotherium that we only know about through fossils. It matters because once a species goes extinct, it's gone forever, and the loss of different species changes ecosystems and reduces the diversity of life on our planet.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
24 sectionsContents
- Definition
- Pseudoextinction
- Lazarus taxa
- Causes
- Genetics and demographic phenomena
- Genetic pollution
- Habitat degradation
- Predation, competition, and disease
- Coextinction
- Climate change
- Sexual selection and male investment
- Mass extinctions
- Modern extinctions
- History of scientific understanding
- Human attitudes and interests
- Completed
- Proposed
- Disease agents
- Disease vectors
- Cloning
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) is an example of a recently extinct [[species.]] thumb|Palaeotherium is an example of an extinct [[genus that is only recorded from fossil records before the existence of hominids.]]
Extinction is the termination of a species via the death of its last member. A taxon may become functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to reproduce and recover. As a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence.