File:Last of its kind.jpg

• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Anthropocene

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Extinction

In the Age of the Anthropocene

“We are living in the middle of a mass extinction today, but none of us feel that urgency, or that it really is so.”

-- Dr. Gerta Keller, Princeton University

Sudan, the last of his Rhino kind

The 8 Million+ Species We Don’t Know

By Edward O. Wilson

March 3, 2018 / New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/opinion/sunday/species-conservation-extinction.html

The most striking fact about the living environment may be how little we know about it. Even the number of living species can be only roughly calculated. A widely accepted estimate by scientists puts the number at about 10 million. In contrast, those formally described, classified and given two-part Latinized names (Homo sapiens for humans, for example) number slightly more than two million. With only about 20 percent of its species known and 80 percent undiscovered, it is fair to call Earth a little-known planet.

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