WEBVTT - Selects: How Extinction Works 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:04.160 Hello friends, It's Josh and I'm back with the Select 0:00:04.559 --> 0:00:08.560 and this week I've selected our twenty fourteen episode on extinction. 0:00:09.360 --> 0:00:12.240 In this episode, we go over all the big extinctions 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:15.920 and what probably caused them, including the one we're most 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.680 likely in right now, which was probably caused by humans. 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.600 And if you pay attention, you can start to notice 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:25.400 a little glimmers, a little beginnings of what would become 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:28.640 my side podcast, The End of the World with Josh Clark. 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:31.800 And although we don't talk about any movies, I'm betting 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.880 there's some glimmers of Chuck's long running side podcast movie 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.319 Crush in here too. Hope you enjoy this episode. It's 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:40.880 a good one. 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:53.880 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:56.920 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:01.120 Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. Jerry is over there. I'mosa said 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.040 your last name, Jerry, how weird. And then today we 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:07.280 have a fourth character in the in the studio with 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:13.560 this Chuck. This a cent, yeah, scent coming together to 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:17.839 make like a tangible human being. So you are wearing Petuli, 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.479 uh not wearing well, you have Petulia on you as 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:25.959 a result of one of Emily's sugar scrubs right from Mama. Yeah, 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.000 and it's love Yourmama dot Com. Yeah, okay, and then 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:35.600 Jerry is contributing to that with an enchilada. So all 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.560 of them combined, I would say, there's like there's an 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.200 extra person in the seat right here. Uh, what kind 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.840 of person is that? Just another person? Okay, a viable 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:51.440 living organism, one that when we leave the studio will 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:56.840 probably become extinct. That's a good one. Did you like that? Yeah, 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.680 I've had that plan since probably two weeks ago. Nice. 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.120 How are you doing, man, I'm good. 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.480 I've been thinking of Buster Rhymes all day. 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:08.480 Why did he have a song about extinction? 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.680 He had an album called Extinction Level Event. Oh yeah, yeah, 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:14.320 and that was in one of the songs. 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:15.520 That sounds super nineties. 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:18.520 Well it's Buster Rhymes, it has to be nineties. 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:22.200 But I mean even those words extinction level Event. People 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:24.560 were worried about stuff because of like the Turn of 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:29.000 the Millennium, you remember, is a huge hit. Sure, Deep 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:34.080 Impact and Armageddon came out like on the same day basically, 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:38.200 and both were hits. Like people were just nervous. Yeah, 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:43.600 And as a result, Buster Rhymes was very popular. That's right. 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:47.880 Although he's not anymore, he's still good though he hadn't 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:48.600 been doing much. 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.120 No, but his body of work is oh for sure. Yeah, 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:55.160 leaders in the New School and his early work with 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:56.840 Trip Call Quest. 0:02:57.480 --> 0:02:59.680 Oh yeah, he guessed it on one of my favorite songs. 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:04.000 Yeah, what's the scenario? Was that the one? I think? So? 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:06.200 I mean, it was definitely on that one. Yeah, but 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:09.880 they that was the one also where I think, Yeah, 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.080 he makes fun of people with saggy pants because it 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:16.960 was so new. Apparently Buster Rhymes wasn't down with it yet, yeah, 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.200 which is pretty ironic because he got hardcore into that. 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:24.079 That was like a dungeon dragon, right right, right, that's 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:24.760 pretty awesome. 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.120 It's a good song. Yeah. So extinction is clearly what 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:33.040 we're talking about today. Uh and uh, I guess we 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:34.760 should probably give a shout out to some of the 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:38.839 extra reading material. Yeah, man, we picked up on There's 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:45.080 a woman named Elizabeth Colbert or Colbert depending on what 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.360 if you watch The Colbert Apoor and she is basically 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:55.080 a leading expert as far as journalists go on extinction. 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.920 She wrote a book called The Sixth Extinction. That's it's 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:00.520 a good article. Yeah, and like they she wrote an 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:02.120 article in the New York or she's a New Yorker 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:05.200 journalist that was basically the predecessor to the book, you 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:06.880 know how they do. Sure, They're like, oh, I need 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:09.800 an extra twenty grand, so I'll just write a synopsis 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:12.840 of the book I'm writing. Yeah, And it's a good article, 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.720 and we work from that. There's another one from the 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:18.440 New York Review of Books called They're taking Over about 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.480 the explosion of jellyfish. On How Stuff Works, there's one 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.279 that I wrote years back called will We Soon Be Extinct? 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:28.440 And there's another House Stuff Works one that we've done 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:32.360 an episode on called why is Biodiversity Important? Yeah? 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:35.560 And I found one in an Io nine h huh 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:40.800 for animals that we thought were extinct but miraculously pop. 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:44.320 Back up nice. Which it's always a good story. Oh yeah, 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:49.200 it's a heartwarming story of triumph of diversity and coming 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:50.880 back when everybody thought you were down. 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.920 Yeah, some of them like basically rocky, hundreds of millions 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:56.680 of years later. Even Yeah, it's crazy, like the silicamt 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:01.719 I think that's when it was at the Big Fish. Yeah, 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:06.200 they just caught that thing one day. Yeah, and said, hey, 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:08.840 wait a minute, Yeah, this thing's extinct. 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.240 It's supposed to be, and we'll talk about how and 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:17.000 why things fall off. But things do fall off, and 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:21.159 it seems that there is a that the whole thing 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:25.839 is a very natural process. Extinction is. But for a 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:33.680 very long time, I guess, scientists believe that the God 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:37.960 created all of the animals yeah on Earth, and that 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:41.320 his will was too perfect, his creation was too divine 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.680 to even allow for extinction. So because they were aware 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:48.960 of the fossil record, they rationalized these huge bones of 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:51.760 animals they didn't see anywhere as we just haven't found 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:52.320 them yet. 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:54.040 Well yeah, and this was all the way up and 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:56.560 you know, into the nineteenth century, and some really smart 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:00.680 people like Thomas Jefferson thought, for instance, when he sent 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:03.680 Lewis and Clark out west, that they might come across 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:06.400 the great Mastodon. Right, He's like, it's found to be 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.200 out there somewhere, guys, to be careful. But there were 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:14.279 some other smarter people like George Cuvier in eighteen twelve, 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:16.919 he was pretty ahead of his time. In fact, in 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:18.800 eighteen twelve he was way ahead of his time because 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.240 he published an essay called revolutions on the surface of 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:26.279 the globe, and he kind of asserted that now things 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:31.240 can go extinct, and he called them a species perduce 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:37.880 lost species and basically hypothesize that there have been cataclysmic 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:39.840 events that have caused extinctions. 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.440 Right. In so many words, this is basically flew in 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.160 the face of this that not only was their extinction, 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:50.000 but there were huge events that caused it. And so 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:52.839 the religious thinkers of the day said, okay, wait, wait, wait, 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:55.719 we can work with this, because buddy, what you're talking 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.719 about is like Noah's flood. So you, my friend, just 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:02.280 the Bible correct using science. 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.200 Yeah, Darwin wasn't on board though, although he did believe 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:07.760 in extinction, he thought it was the only way it 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:09.840 could happen is the gradual extinction. 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:12.280 Right, That is also true, and we'll talk about that 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.440 as well. And of course Darwin is this huge hero 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:18.280 of biology, so everybody's like, well, Darwin's right about just 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:24.960 about everything. So literally, until the nineteen nineties, Darwin's view 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:30.560 that extinction happens extremely slowly, slower than speciation events, so 0:07:30.880 --> 0:07:34.280 ultimately you should always have more species new species coming 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:39.560 up than you have going extinct. Until the nineteen nineties. 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.720 That's the way that it was, That's the way it seemed. Yeah, 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.080 So Chuck, like I said, all of this stayed around 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:49.360 until nineteen ninety one. Yeah, and it was a result 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:51.760 of like, think about it, think about how you think 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:56.440 of mass extinctions. Now, you think of an asteroid hitting Earth, 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:01.080 destroying everything. And it wasn't until nineteen ninety one that 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:05.400 that view became widely accepted. And it was because of 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:09.720 this dude named Alvarez. He was a geologist, I believe, 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:13.680 Walter Alvarez, and in the seventies he started studying this 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.960 clay layer that was basically in the fossil record right 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:21.440 at the time the dinosaur suddenly died out right, and 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:23.880 no one could quite explain what was going on here. 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:26.920 They just knew that this must have happened gradually, so 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.160 it must be a problem with the actual fossil record, 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:31.280 not our way of thinking. 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:33.520 Yeah, and there are plenty of problems with the fossil record, 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:34.480 which we'll get into as. 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:38.480 Well, right, But Walter Alvarez said, let me look at 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:40.360 this in a little more detail, and he looked at 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.960 the iridium and found that the iridium levels were off 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:46.520 the charts. Which shouldn't be because it's very very rare, 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.920 and we associate iridium on Earth as being brought here by, say, 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:51.120 like an asteroid or whatever. 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:53.000 Yeah, it's superabundant asteroids. 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.560 So all of a sudden, this guy goes, oh, wait 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:59.960 a minute, maybe we can explain this dying out of 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.440 dinosaurs where the dinosaurs went sixty five million years ago 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:06.640 by an asteroid. And that was in nineteen eighty that 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.040 they proposed a hypothesis, and they ran into a lot 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:15.440 of resistance, and then finally in nineteen ninety one, a 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:19.679 year after a crater was discovered under the Yucatan Peninsula 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:24.480 in Mexico, they dated it and said, yeah, it just 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:27.040 so happens that this crater was formed just at the 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:30.400 moment the dinosaurs died out. So yeah, the Alvarez hypothesis 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:34.080 is probably right, and extinction can happen on a mass 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:37.560 sudden scale, just as it can also happen on a 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:39.200 very long term scale too. 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:41.720 Yeah, that crater was one hundred and twelve miles wide, 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:46.160 so it fit the profile and basically ended the Cretaceous 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.720 period in the Mesozoic era, and for a while they 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:53.280 called it the Cretaceous Tertiary event. But now they call 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:55.760 it the Cretaceous Paleogene event. 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:59.800 And did you notice that thing KPg right, they noticed that. 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.040 Did you notice the Cretaceous, which is spelled with the 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:07.120 sea is denoted with a K? Yeah? Did you see why? 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.440 It's just German? It's just a German translation for it. 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.120 I figured it was something like that. Yeah, it was 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:13.800 just bugging me. 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.480 So now we now believe an asteroid brought us into 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.800 the Cinazoic era that we that we enjoyed today. 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:23.640 Love the Sinazoic. It's pretty good, pretty awesome. It's a 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:26.679 good era. I mean, it's our era. Yeah, you gotta 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:31.280 love it. You gotta love it. So Chuck, like I said, 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:35.280 the extinction, extinction can happen, and it does happen, and 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:39.640 it's a natural process. If you talk to people about 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:44.440 extinction today, though, they say, yeah, we're kind of in 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:46.439 a huge extinction event. 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:48.839 Yeah, and it makes sense. I mean when you look 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:53.240 at our past. They estimate maybe up to five billion 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:56.160 species have lived on Earth, and more than ninety nine 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:57.120 percent of those are gone. 0:10:57.720 --> 0:10:59.400 And I love how the New Yorker put it. 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.160 I think that there's an old joke that all of 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:04.240 life on Earth today could be accounted for with a 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:05.280 simple rounding error. 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:07.360 Yeah, like everything we know. 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.680 So, yeah, we've lost ninety nine percent of things that 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.679 have ever lived on this planet due to extinction. 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.520 Right, which again is like it has such a terrible 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:22.520 connotation these days, extinction, extinction, but it happens naturally. Apparently. 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.320 What they've found from looking at the fossil record from 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:29.680 studying life on Earth is that a species tends to 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:32.920 have about a ten million year lifespan, and the a 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:37.000 speciation event occurs where it branches off from one specie 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.400 and produces an entirely new species, and that species on 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.120 average will stick around for about ten million years and 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:47.160 then something happens and it dies out and other species 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:51.520 take its place. This is the natural course of life 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.880 from what we can tell. The thing is, it normally 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:59.600 happens on a very slow time scale, like when it's 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:02.160 so what it's called background extinction, right. 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:05.400 Yeah, the background rate is supposed to be between one 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.640 and five species per year, but they think that now 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:10.559 it could be like one hundred times that. 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:13.680 I've seen up to a thousand times the normal rate, 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.360 And I saw another study from twenty fourteen, so it's 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:22.200 fresh and it said that they these researchers calculated the 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.480 normal rates and they found that there's between point zero 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:29.920 two to three and point one three five extinct species 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:34.360 per million species per year. That doesn't really mean much. 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:37.559 It means so much that it boggles the mind. Yeah, 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:40.160 you know, like that's a really strange way of putting it. 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.600 But basically they're saying, like, for every million species on 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.559 Earth at any given point in time during a year, 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:51.880 as low as point zero two three species will die out. 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:54.839 So in a year you shouldn't necessarily have that main 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:59.920 species in current times though, like you said, between a 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.800 one hundred and a thousand times that rate is what 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:06.000 we're seeing right now, which is you could say, alarming. 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:06.920 It is alarming. 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:09.280 The reason they don't have hard numbers on this stuff 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.480 is because, like we said, it's a tough thing to study, 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:16.040 because the fossil record is well, there's a lot of problems. 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:20.720 One is it's incomplete. We don't really know how many 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:24.880 fossor species have been on Earth since the beginning of Earth. 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:30.760 It's just impossible to tell fossil's forum under really specific conditions. 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:34.400 So you may think something is gone because it has 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:37.040 disappeared from the fossil record. But all that means is 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.040 there wasn't a fossil. It doesn't necessarily mean it's gone right, 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:43.000 So that's why things will pop back up that they'll think, hey, 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:45.760 we haven't seen a fossil of this guy in two 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:47.720 thousand years, but here it is all of a sudden. 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.120 And even if it has gone extinct, just where it 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.120 stopped showing up in the fossil record doesn't mean, like 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:57.200 you said, that's when it went extinct, right, then it 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:58.920 could have been millions of years later. 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:01.760 Well, because then you're supposed that the last thing of 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.120 that species happened to make a fossil. 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.520 Yes, which is just silly. Yeah, and also it makes 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:08.800 you wonder how many species have lived and died on 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:11.920 Earth that just never showed up in the fossil record. Yeah, 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:13.520 just weren't fossils at all. Right. 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.920 Yeah, Well, if it never crawled into amber or you know, 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.720 was buried by ash or something, that's luck. 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:24.840 Or got trapped in Bronosaurus poop. I don't know if 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.800 that's good luck or bad luck. It's just it is 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:29.000 what it is. It's nature. 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.320 So because of all these gaps in the fossil record, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.560 these Researchers that love this topic tend to do a 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:39.480 lot of math, right, and a lot of speculating with 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:42.600 algorithms and mathematical formulas. 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:44.800 They love this stuff out, sure, and that's. 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:47.600 The only way to do it, really, to speculate with numbers. 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.520 It also helps them define things like the minimum viable population, 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.960 which if you go below that, then it's bad news 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:58.000 for the species. It's the minimum amount you can have 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:01.960 to still be considered to have a bright future. 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.600 Right as a thing, or to just survive as a species. 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:09.240 Right, Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, dim future if 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:09.960 you're not surviving. 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:13.200 Yeah, math is pretty grim. It can be in this 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:17.200 case for sure. So we'll talk about exactly what makes 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:21.280 an extinction and then what makes up mass extinctions. But 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:37.680 first let's do a little breakage. Huh okay, So, Chuck, 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:44.000 you've been talking about animals, animal species going extinct and 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:46.560 then showing up again like the Sela cant Yeah, or 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:49.760 at least disappearing right from the record, But we as 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:52.760 humans assumed they were extinct. Like again, the Sela cant 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:55.520 is this fish that they caught off the coast of 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:57.520 South Africa. When did we talk about it? Was it 0:15:57.640 --> 0:15:59.520 end of this day in history. I don't remember. We 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:01.640 definitely hit on that though. I think it was because 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:05.320 it's huge, right, Yeah, it's a big, ugly fish. Yeah, 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.480 and it looks like an old dinosaur. But they thought 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:12.120 it had died out like like fifty sixty million years ago. 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:15.120 Actually way longer. They thought it disappeared four hundred million 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:15.840 years ago. 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:18.720 Even more impressive. Yeah. So then they caught one off 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:21.320 the coast of South Africa in the thirties. Then they 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:25.680 caught another one a couple decades later in Madagascar or 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:31.560 Mauritius or something, and that made the selacanth a Lazarus species, 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:35.040 even though it hadn't really gone anywhere. We just thought 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.280 it did. So we humans having the most important perspective 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.480 on the entire planet, possibly in the entire universe. Yeah, 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:43.160 it was a Lazarus species to us. 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:46.800 Yeah, Lazarus from the Bible, right, raised from the dead. Yeah, 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:47.800 like the Seila cant. 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:51.880 Again with the Biblical connotations with extinction. Yeah, there's a 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:53.760 lot at stake here, that's true. 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.360 Another way something might disappear and you might think it's 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:00.440 gone is if it actually evolves into a new species. 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:04.280 That's called pseudo extinction, and that's a great success story 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:04.680 as well. 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.240 It is, but it also I don't understand why that's 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:11.080 not just a speciation event. I mean, why is that 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:14.440 pseudo extinction? Why is that any different from regular extinction? 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:21.479 Yeah, maybe just because it's didn't die out, it actually 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:22.680 just changed and evolved. 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:25.320 Those are two different things. Yeah, it seems like a 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.840 gray area to me. Yeah. But for the most part, 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:33.359 when an animal just disappears, and we should say, like 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:36.800 even today, we're still finding things that we thought were extinct, 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.879 so called Lazarus species, which goes to make the point 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:45.000 we have no idea how many living species there are 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.640 on the planet today, Yeah, or have been. It's all 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:52.320 just a good guess it is using math, yeah, grim, 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.639 grim math. But for the most part, we understand that 0:17:55.680 --> 0:18:00.480 when a species goes away, suddenly it went extinct. And 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.880 as we've been saying again and again, extinction is kind 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.720 of this natural process, or it is a very natural process, 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:13.760 and it typically results from a change in the habitat yeah, 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:18.600 of a species, and it's inability to adapt so it 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:19.160 dies out. 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:25.800 Yeah, competition with other species, hunting by humans, or perhaps 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:29.120 the environment has been tainted by humans. 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.000 Humans or a new bacteria or a new virus. The 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.600 thing is, though, is so these these big factors, habitat loss, 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:39.960 competition with new species, hunting, and contaminous in the environment. 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.280 Those are the big four reasons that something goes extinct, right, Yeah, 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.840 Humans can and are responsible for all four of those. 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:49.960 Yeah, and the and these are This is the extinction 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:53.080 that happens over time. Obviously not a big asteroid hit 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:53.639 in the planet. 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.840 No, but it can't happen pretty quickly. In this this 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.919 is a Tracy Wilson joint and in the introduction she 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:06.440 mentions the stellar sea cow, which was an Arctic resident. 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.440 It was a big old manatee basically. Yeah, and they 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.600 were first described by Arctic explorers in seventeen forty one. 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.600 By seventeen sixty eight they were extinct. So it can't 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:24.000 happen on a pretty rapid scale, Yeah, especially when you 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:24.960 introduce humans. 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:27.439 Yeah, and it you know, it has a domino effect too, 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:30.000 because we talked about and everyone knows about the dangers 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:32.880 of losing bees. It's not just like, oh, well they're 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:35.960 no more bees. That's going to affect pollination and plants, 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:38.560 and those plants are being fed on by other animals 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:40.360 and it. 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:41.640 Tends to have a snowball effect. 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.760 Like for example, at the end of the last Ice age, mammals, 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:49.040 small mammals started to go extinct and because of that, 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:51.840 large animals started to go extinct because they like to 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:53.360 eat the small animals exactly. 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:57.280 Which is the answer to the question why is biodiversity important? Well, 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:01.239 because ecosystems thrive and survive on a wide number of 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:06.800 species that exist pretty much naturally in balance. Yeah. You know, 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:10.080 a pretty good example of that stuff falling out of 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:14.560 balance is the passenger pigeon. Are you familiar. 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.720 Yeah, they're trying to de extinct that thing. 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:21.360 Yeah, you want to talk about de extinction. 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:24.720 Yeah, Well, the extinction is exactly what it sounds like. 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.920 It is sort of Jurassic parky it is. In two 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:32.760 thousand and three, some scientists revived the Bercardo Bucardo and 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:36.159 that's a Spanish mountain goat, and they did it just 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:39.080 sort of like Jurassic Park from DNA that was frozen 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:45.840 in time. Unfortunately, although it did work initially, the DNA 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:49.119 only survived a matter of minutes, but they did it 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:50.640 did count as a de extinction. 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:54.520 I think there was a live birth that survived a 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:55.560 few minutes, wasn't it. 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:58.639 Yeah, the animal itself only survived a few minutes. 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:02.000 Though, right, It was like, I should not be. 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:08.200 That's true, And I mean they basically said, it's happening now, 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:12.040 and we have the capabilities, and we may not be 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.480 able to bring the wooly mammoth back, but we might 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:15.680 be able to bring back something. 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:17.840 Kind of close, right. So, and that raises in this 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:22.439 article that you sent, just this moral question, like should 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:25.040 we be doing this just because we can? Does that 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:27.560 mean we should? And so like, if you bring back 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:30.480 an animal that has been extinct for so long that 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:33.080 its habitat is now gone, you know where they gonna live, 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:35.480 exactly where you're gonna put it a zoo, that doesn't 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:37.440 seem like a good reason to bring an animal back. 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:38.840 So we could put it in a zoo. 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:44.000 Yeah, And just like maybe this is my opinion here, 0:21:44.040 --> 0:21:45.760 which we don't do a lot of, but it seems 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:48.879 like concentrating on the problems we face now with the 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:52.159 extinction rates is something that we should concentrate on, not 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:53.399 bringing back the wily mammoth. 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:56.359 Right, And that also kind of details of the point 0:21:56.440 --> 0:22:01.919 that if we have this ability and routinely exercise it. 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:05.199 We may be less inclined to protect the stuff we 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:07.840 have now for like, oh it's important enough, we'll just 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:10.760 genetically re engineer it and bring it back later. Yeah. 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:12.920 I think they in the CNN article they like in 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:14.960 it to just thinking we have an undue. 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:18.640 Button right on the world controls Z. Yeah, no, good, No, 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:21.840 it's funny because the author doesn't realize that control Z 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:26.200 works outside of Microsoft Word too. I don't know he 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:32.640 specifically mentioned control Z and Microsoft word, oh word, specifically 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:35.240 Microsoft word. He said, Yeah, that's a little weird. He 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:37.199 could be a shill and he was just working it 0:22:37.240 --> 0:22:40.240