Pseudoextinction
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Pseudoextinction of a species occurs where there are no more living members of that species, but members of a daughter species or subspecies remain alive. Much of evolution is believed to occur through pseudoextinction, and many prehistoric extinct species have evolved into new species; for example the extinct Eohippus (an ancient horse-like animal) was the ancestor of several extant species including the horse, the zebra and the donkey. The Eohippus itself is no more, but because its descendants live on, it has suffered pseudoextinction.
Pseudoextinction, also called phyletic extinction, can sometimes apply to wider taxons than the species level. For instance, the entire Superorder Dinosauria is believed to have become pseudoextinct by many paleontologists, who argue that the feathered dinosaurs are the ancestors of modern day birds. Some neoeugenicists, such as Gregory Stock argue that genetically engineered 'designer babies' will ultimately lead to human pseudoextinction
See also
- Main articles: on Extinction, and the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
- Human extinction
References
- Stock, G., 2003, Redesigning Humans: Choosing our genes, changing our future, Mariner Books ISBN: 0618340831
External links
- The Last Human (http://research.arc2.ucla.edu/pmts/rexcerpt.htm) - Excerpt from Redesigning HUMANS by Gregory Stock, envisaging the engineered evolution of modern humans into a posthuman form, and saying: "Such an occurrence would more aptly be termed a pseudoextinction, since it would not end our lineage. Unlike the saber-toothed tiger and other large mammals that left no descendants when our ancestors drove them to extinction, Homo sapiens would spawn its own successors by fast-forwarding its evolution."
- The difficulty of differentiating extinction from pseudoextinction in the fossil record (http://trc.ucdavis.edu/djbegun/Lect_paleo&homo.html)
 | This science article is a stub. You can help Biocrawler by expanding it (http://www.biocrawler.com/w/index.php?title=Pseudoextinction&action=edit). |
