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Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because 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" after a period of apparent absence.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. It uses a set of criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species and subspecies. These criteria are relevant to all species and all regions of the world. With its strong scientific base, the IUCN Red List is recognized as the most authoritative guide to the status of biological diversity. A series of Regional Red Lists are produced by countries or organizations, which assess the risk of extinction to species within a political management unit.
The rails, or Rallidae, are a large cosmopolitan family of small- to medium-sized, ground-living birds. The family exhibits considerable diversity and includes the crakes, coots, and gallinules. Many species are associated with wetlands, although the family is found in every terrestrial habitat except dry deserts, polar regions, and alpine areas above the snow line. Members of the Rallidae occur on every continent except Antarctica. Numerous island species are known. The most common rail habitats are marshland and dense forest. They are especially fond of dense vegetation.
Oryx is a genus consisting of four large antelope species called oryxes. Three of them are native to arid parts of Africa, and the fourth to the Arabian Peninsula. Their fur is pale with contrasting dark markings in the face and on the legs, and their long horns are almost straight. The exception is the scimitar oryx, which lacks dark markings on the legs, only has faint dark markings on the head, has an ochre neck, and horns that are clearly decurved.
The following are lists of extinct animals:
In paleontology, a Lazarus taxon is a taxon that disappears for one or more periods from the fossil record, only to appear again later. Likewise in conservation biology and ecology, it can refer to species or populations that were thought to be extinct, and are rediscovered. The term Lazarus taxon was coined by Karl W. Flessa & David Jablonski in 1983 and was then expanded by Jablonski in 1986. Wignall and Benton defined Lazarus taxa as, 'At times of biotic crisis many taxa go extinct, but others only temporarily disappeared from the fossil record, often for intervals measured in millions of years, before reappearing unchanged'. Earlier work also supports the concept though without using the name Lazarus taxon, like work by Christopher R. C. Paul.
Local extinction is the condition of a species that ceases to exist in a chosen geographic area of study, though it still exists elsewhere. Local extinctions are contrasted with global extinctions.
The conservation status of a group of organisms indicates whether the group still exists and how likely the group is to become extinct in the near future. Many factors are taken into account when assessing conservation status: not simply the number of individuals remaining, but the overall increase or decrease in the population over time, breeding success rates, and known threats. Various systems of conservation status exist and are in use at international, multi-country, national and local levels as well as for consumer use.
Neontology is a part of biology that, in contrast to paleontology, deals with living organisms. It is the study of extant taxa : taxa with members still alive, as opposed to (all) being extinct. For example:
Geochelone is a genus of tortoises.
An IUCN Red List Critically Endangered (CR) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of 2021, there are 6,811 species that are considered to be Critically Endangered. This is out of the 120,372 species currently tracked by the IUCN.
The Catalogue of Life is an online database that provides the most comprehensive and authoritative index of known species of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms. It was created in 2001 as a partnership between the global Species 2000 and the American Integrated Taxonomic Information System. The Catalogue interface is available in twelve languages and is used by research scientists, citizen scientists, educators, and policy makers. The Catalogue is also used by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Barcode of Life Data System, Encyclopedia of Life, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The Catalogue currently compiles data from 168 peer-reviewed taxonomic databases, that are maintained by specialist institutions around the world. As of 2019, the Catalogue lists 1,837,565 of the world's 2.2m extant species known to taxonomists on the planet at present time.
The genus Cathartes includes medium-sized to large carrion-feeding birds in the New World vulture (Cathartidae) family. The three extant species currently classified in this genus occur widely in the Americas. There is one extinct species known from the Quaternary of Cuba.
A species that is extinct in the wild (EW) is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as known only by living members kept in captivity or as a naturalized population outside its historic range due to massive habitat loss.
Acicula hausdorfi is a species of very small land snail with an operculum. It is a terrestrial gastropod mollusk in the family Aciculidae.
The baiji is a possibly extinct species of freshwater dolphin, and is thought to be the first dolphin species driven to extinction due to the impact of humans. Since Baiji means 'white fin' in Chinese, it means 'white-finned dolphin'. In China, the species is also called the Chinese river dolphin, Yangtze river dolphin, Yangtze dolphin and whitefin dolphin. Nicknamed the "Goddess of the Yangtze", it was regarded as the goddess of protection by local fishermen and boatmen. It is not to be confused with the Chinese white dolphin or the finless porpoise.
Gyralina is a genus of air-breathing land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusks in the family Pristilomatidae.
References
- 1 2 3 Fontaine B., Bouchet P., Van Achterberg K., Alonso-Zarazaga M. A., Araujo R. et al. (2007). "The European union’s 2010 target: Putting rare species in focus." Biological Conservation139: 167-185. Table 2 on the page 173. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2007.06.012. PDF.
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