Last pinta island tortoise11/11/2023 Study skins of the extinct Lana’i and Kaua’i ‘akiaola Photo: Paul Sweet/AMNH ![]() Declaring a species extinct itself can be an act of giving up, or worse-once a species is considered extinct, governments may no longer feel the need to fund protections for its habitat. Generally, it takes decades without a sighting of a species plus dedicated searches before researchers can fully establish that no individuals are left. The list is contains only 160 species, many of which were last seen many years ago or only discovered recently. The IUCN’s Red List names only a thousand extinct or extinct-in-the-wild species-but one paper estimated that 7 percent of the known extant species might be extinct, if you include estimates of invertebrate extinctions.īelow, we’ve compiled a list of the species that the IUCN declared extinct in the past decade (it does not include species still around but declared extinct in the wild). Earth might be home to anywhere from 5 million to 10 million species, or perhaps a trillion, according to disparate estimates, of which researchers have catalogued less than 2 million. ![]() Even figuring out the actual extent of the biodiversity crisis is difficult, given how hard it is to estimate what we don’t know. But these estimates aren’t made from stories about big, rare zoo attractions most of those victims are likely invertebrates, plants, and other beings you may not think much about. Scientists estimate that species are going extinct 1,000 times faster than they should be, and “literally dozens” go extinct each day. During the 2000s, a cement company wiped the hill off the map for its valuable resources, rendering the “microjewel” snail extinct. ![]() Perhaps a better mascot of the extinction crisis is Plectostoma sciaphilum a small snail, called a “microjewel” for its beautiful, intricate shell, that inhabited a single limestone hill in Malaysia. But George’s story is not a typical story.
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