Is evolution mathematically possible?

Question

If a species takes centuries, even millenia to evolve, and the extinction rate before humans was estimated at 3 species per YEAR (It is now a minimum of 1,000 species per year) so if evolution is correct, then shouldn't life on Earth have been wiped out many, many years ago?

PS. I'm not against evoltuion, just curious

Answer 1

Assuming conservatively at 3 million or so known species, at 1000 species extinctions per year it would take 3000 years for all species to go extinct.  This is a very conservative estimate because the number of actual species is probably much higher than 3 million (up to 50 million, or more maybe).

This argument, however, is not logical.  New species are constantly evolving (some going extinct without ever being discovered by humans), species evolve at different rates, among many other factored ignored by that simplistic logic.  What is known though, is that we are losing species at an alarming rate.

Answer 2

The mathematics are sound. The rate of extinction of species is roughly equal to the rate at which new species are formed (mass extinction events excluded).  This is why most species that ever lived are extinct.  There are roughly 2 million species of Earth as a low estimate (high estimates are roughly 100 million).  If a species diverges into two every 300,000 years, that would be more than sufficient to generate 3 per year.

If you use the high estimate of species per year becoming extinct, you should use the high value for a total.  The estimates are not independent.  With no new species generated, it would take man 100,000 years to extinguish the current species.

Answer 3

The extinction rate hasn't always been 3 species a year.

Answer 4

Evolution occurs, therefore it is possible.

Thanks for asking.

Answer 5

many species evolve at a much faster rate than millenia because their breeding cycle and "birthing " rates are extremely short....Even after the great extinction 65 miilion years ago..look how many species exist today....

Answer 6

good question... make people use that fat between their ears.

the first thing i would look at is where those numbers came from.

who said it was 3 per year before?

how the h**l can they acuratly tell that?

who said 1000 species per year go extinct now? do they count 79 species of gnat as 1 or 79?

one thing to help move thought is that dogs can be totally different from their grandparents, through just two generations you can get a dog that is new... not that that mix has never been done before or anything, its just a fact that might help the idea of evolving faster like 100 life spans instead of 100,000,000 life spans.

Answer 7

No, only those who get wiped out get wiped out.

Life itself is hard to get rid of, it'll always exist in some form or another, knowing that prokaryotes can survive is very harsh conditions.

Furthermore, you shouldn't use mathematics to predict evolution, it's not a linear growth, or quite even a growth, evolution is not always improving, not always increasing, only whatever works (whatever fits)