Will our species go extinct? The short answer is yes. The fossil record shows everything goes extinct, eventually. Almost all species that ever lived, over 99.9%, are extinct.
Some left descendants. Most – plesiosaurs, trilobites, Brontosaurus – didn’t. That’s also true of other human species. Neanderthals, Denisovans, H. erectus all vanished, leaving just H. sapiens. Humans are inevitably heading for extinction. The question isn’t whether we go extinct, but when.
Life is the last thing you would associate with the eternally dark craters of the lunar poles. But these craters could hold the key to explaining how complex, multi-cellular organisms evolved on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, affording unimaginable insights into our planet’s biological past.
English classical pianist Paul Barton plays famous classical music pieces on the piano for elderly/disabled elephants. I recently discovered his channel on Youtube – he’s doing an amazing job.
Evolution explains how all living beings, including us, came to be. It would be easy to assume evolution works by continuously adding features to organisms, constantly increasing their complexity. Some fish evolved legs and walked onto the land. Some dinosaurs evolved wings and began to fly. Others evolved wombs and began to give birth to live young.
Leopard (scientific name: Panthera pardus) is one of the five big cat species in the genus Panthera, a member of the Felidae. The other members of the Panthera genus are Lion (Panthera leo), tiger (Panthera tigris), jaguar (Panthera onca), and snow leopard (Panthera uncia). The leopard is the fourth biggest cat in the world, after the tiger, lion, and jaguar. Here are 20 amazing leopard facts.
Young software developer Neal Agarwal (Twitter: @nealagarwal) created an amazing interactive visualization showing life in the depth of the oceans. Named “The Deep Sea” (click here to see the visualization), the interactive webpage shows the living depths and also the maximum diving points of various animals. Be prepared to be amazed!
Yesterday, I published a post titled “Koalas are ‘Functionally Extinct’ now“, based on an article on Forbes. It seems this isn’t the case: science journalist Erin Biba (@erinbiba) wrote on Twitter that “The news that Koalas are functionally extinct is from a press release that was issued in May, before the fires, from a group that has been saying they’re extinct for years. Koalas ARE IN TROUBLE but there is still hope for conservation.”
After bushfires in Australia have destroyed 80% of their habitat, koalas, iconic symbols of Australia, are “functionally extinct”, according to reports. Australia is the only place in the world where koalas are found.
Another amazing Beluga whale video (click here to see “Beluga whale filmed playing fetch” video): the cute animal rescues an iPhone from the sea and returns it to the humans.
Nine human species walked the Earth 300,000 years ago. Now there is just one. The Neanderthals, H. neanderthalensis, were stocky hunters adapted to Europe’s cold steppes. The related Denisovans inhabited Asia, while the more primitive H. erectus lived in Indonesia and H. rhodesiensis in central Africa. Were other humans the first victims of the sixth mass extinction?