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MidnightCougar
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 Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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| IIRC 99% of known species are extinct,... so in truth >99% of all species are extinct. |
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IchbineinKatze
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Joined: 03 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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Remember guys, when you read about this in a scientific article or hear about it on an informational tv program, they will use the word approximately, because we can not calculate exactly the percentage of extinct animals.
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Obby
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Joined: 29 Dec 2007
Posts: 101
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:40 am Post subject: |
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| 99% is a nice even number. It's probably something dumb like 99.984723446%, and they can't very well round to 100% without misleading idiots. Just let it be. |
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BOGDOG
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Joined: 04 Jan 2008
Posts: 32
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:50 pm Post subject: |
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| aitm wrote: | | Still, I question how anyone can determine a percentage of an unknown amount. Surely the time it would take to identify and catalog any speices would take at minimum 2 minutes. Times that by 2million creatures, why thats 32 years of constant 40 hour a week work. Seems like them statiticians are at work again. The same ones that count stars in the area of a toilet paper roll pointing to the sky and then extrapulate (sp) a precise number. By the way, I am a skeptic to the point I believe not only is there the possibility that two snowflakes are alike, I think most likely there a dozens alike. |
I believe the current number of known living species, the have been named, is around 1.5 million, depending on the source.
Based only on what has been found and cataloged, of living species, it would mean the other 99% of species that are extinct would total about 148 million.
If you can find evidence of a new extinct species, check the record to make sure its not counted twice, it would take over 292 years at a rate of 1 species per minute, 24/7 continuously.
We do not know how many species are currently still living, we could not even check to see if the evidence of an extinct species is just a fossil of a species that is still around today.
99% is a projection. |
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aitm
using the thinker thingy
Joined: 06 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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99% is a projection,,,hmmmm sounds like a fancy word for guess.
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Eyedunno
The Great JuJu at the Bottom of the Sea
Joined: 13 Aug 2005
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Location: Cin City, OH!
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| Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 9:44 pm Post subject: |
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| aitm wrote: | | 99% is a projection,,,hmmmm sounds like a fancy word for guess. |
Well, but if you were paying attention, it's based in part on the fact that there were numerous events where the majority of life on the planet died out, combined with other mass extinctions that weren't quite as devastating, and lots of extinctions in between. It's got to be at LEAST 99%, but percent is a convenient way to think about it. |
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Azathoth
Gnome Mage
Joined: 29 Oct 2007
Posts: 146
Local time: 11:10 AM
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| Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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Well another thing to consider is that a lot of these extinct species would be like tiny subspecies of fire ants, or things that branched off from sea cucumbers.
When people hear about mass extinction they think of dying elephants and crap; it's a bit more refreshing to think about it in realistic terms.
This post had a point but I lost it.
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baddogma
antitheist
Joined: 01 Feb 2006
Posts: 9460
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Location: Colorado
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| Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:24 am Post subject: |
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There is no way to know how many species have existed given the definition of species and the blur between species.
simple enough to say that damn near all species that have existed exist no longer. Azathoth, I follow you. No one thinks of bacteria etc. It is just dodo birds and mammoths the average person pictures.
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