• Question: what is the general rate in which animals are becoming extinct?

    Asked by georgieb33 to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 17 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Joanna Cruden

      Joanna Cruden answered on 17 Jun 2012:

      it is varied, in general it seems to be from origin to extinction is roughly between 1 million to 10 million years

    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      It’s difficult to come up with something definitive, given how many unknown species there are, but theoretical ecologists report that the rate of extinction we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.

      These experts also have calculated that between 0.01 and 0.1% of all species will become extinct each year – we don;t have a good number for total number of species, but obviously the news isn;t good going by these facts!

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