Cultural Extinction Of Species

We are not disturbed by the unchecked disappearance of the various species — we don’t seem to miss their sight or sound! Have we become so self-absorbed that we thoughtlessly disregard Nature’s ‘circle of life’?

- Dr Asad R. Rahmani

Evolution and extinction are natural processes and complementary to each other. Taxa evolve, diversify, flourish, and die. The course takes millions of years. Some species leave behind fossils and we know, or think we know, what they must have looked like; while perhaps larger numbers of lower life forms have left us without a trace. They are the unsung tragedies of the Earth. Some species, like the crocodile, has remained unchanged for millions of years, surviving the various geological eras. We call them ‘living fossil’. Like evolution, extinction is a slow process, sometimes taking hundreds of thousands of years.

Natural extinction is mainly due to geological and climatic changes on Earth, or evolution of more robust species replacing those that cannot adapt in the changing world. New species occupy the ecological niches of the dying species. Similar is the history of human civilizations. All life is transitory. While species live on for millions of years before fading, human life or even civilizations, are not even a blip in the geological timescale.