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Draft:Outline of extinction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to extinction:

Extinction is the termination of an organism 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. 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.

Over five billion species are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryotes globally, possibly many times more if microorganisms are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and mammoths. Through evolution, species arise through the process of speciation. Species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. The relationship between animals and their ecological niches has been firmly established. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance, although some species, called living fossils, survive with little to no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years.

What type of thing is extinction?

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Extinction can be described as all of the following:

  • A biological phenomenon –
    • A type of death

Types of extinction

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Potential causes of extinction

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History of extinction

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History of extinction

Extinct species

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Extinct animals

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Arachnids

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Birds

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Fishes

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Mammals

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Insects

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Amphibians

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Extinct plants

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List of recently extinct plants

Extinct species, by continent

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Reversing extinction

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Extinction in media

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Art

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Film

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Persons influential in extinction

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See also

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References

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