The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to extinction:
Extinction is the termination of a taxon by 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. Because 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.
More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, mammoths, ground sloths, thylacines, trilobites, and golden toads.
What type of thing is extinction?
editExtinction can be described as all of the following:
Causes of extinction
editHistory of extinction
editExtinct spieces
editBy type
editArachnids
editBirds
editFishes
editMammals
editInsects
editAmphibians
editBy continet
edit- List of African animals extinct in the Holocene
- List of Asian animals extinct in the Holocene
- List of European species extinct in the Holocene
- List of North American animals extinct in the Holocene
- List of Oceanian species extinct in the Holocene
- List of South American animals extinct in the Holocene
- Islands
Extinct planets
editGeneral extinction concepts
editExtinction in media
editArt
editFilm
editExtinction-related organizations
editExtinction-related publications
editPersons influential in extinction
editSee also
editReferences
editExternal links
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