What percentage of living things are now extinct?

Answer 1

I am pretty sure that you are asking, "of all things that were once living, what is the percentage of species that are now extinct?" or "what is the ratio of extinct species to living species?"

This is a very good question and there are many many answers out there. You see, there are many species still being found, both fossils and living creatures in rainforests, oceans, deserts, you name it. Since we haven't finished cataloging all of the living creatures or the extinct creatures, it is pretty tough to give a good answer to that question.

The World Conservation Union says, "Identifying the actual number of historic extinctions is difficult because only c. 1.9 million of the world's estimated 5 – 30 million species (see Erwin 1982; Hodkinson and Casson 1991; Novotny et al. 2002) have been described. Recent extinctions may be even more prevalent among undescribed species due to the sheer number and the fact that the discovery and description of species tends to be biased toward more broadly distributed and abundant taxa (see Collen et al. 2004)."

Another problem that we have run into in recent times is finding living fossils that we once thought were extinct. Or animals that were presumed extinct in the wild. So there is always a chance that something we thought was extinct will pop up again.

This is pretty rare though and would not have as much impact on the ratio as the fact that people believe there are between 5-100 milllion species. That is a 95 million species difference.

So, although most people state that 99+% of all species are extinct, I have never found a number that they attribute to the total number of extinct species. This is critical to know because it can change the percentage greatly.

if they are using the 1.9 million classifed number as the living # of species, and just picking 200 million extinct species out of the air, then the percentage of living creatures would be less than 1%. But if we use the extreme upper end guess of 100 million as the living # of species with the same 200 million extinct, this would give us a percentage of 33.3% of all species are currently living. HUGE DIFFERENCE!

example:
"Since life began, about 99 percent of the earth's species have disappeared and, on at least five occasions, huge numbers have died out in a relatively short time. The most recent of these mass extinctions, about 65 million years ago, swept away the dinosaurs and many other forms of life. However, despite such catastrophes, the total number of living species has, until recently, followed a generally upward trend." - [The Extinction Website]

"Of all species that have ever lived, 99.9 percent are extinct." - [natural history museum, University of Kansas]

"In the recent past, the level of biological diversity was the highest the world has ever seen. However, the number of species is not known, even to the nearest order of magnitude. The number of described species is about 1.4 million; but the total is estimated at about 5 million." - [ Biodiversity and Conservation: A Hypertext Book by Peter J. Bryant]

"Estimates of undiscovered species on Earth range from 10 million to 100 million." - [The US National Science Board (1989)]

Notice how none of these sources lists the actual number of extinct species? Interesting.

Answer 2

Things That Are Extinct

Answer 3

in the event that they're residing then they do no longer seem to be extinct. there are a number of extinct issues that are no longer to any extent further residing, dinosaurs and acquaintances. As a proportion greater issues have died then are at the instant residing so i could supply you a WAG(wild @ss guess) of ninety% of stay is now extinct.

Answer 4

Living things are, by definition, "alive" and therefore cannot be extinct. Try to reword your question to make sense.

Answer 5

100% of "living things" are alive. If you are asking what % of all thing that have every lived on the earth are no longer on the planet, over 99% of all living species on earth are no longer alive.

Answer 6

Zero. If it's living, it can't be extinct.

Answer 7

This is a joke, right? ZERO PERCENT! Get a job and move out of your mother's basement. And quit trying to hump my leg.