Content-Transfer-Encoding: |
7bit |
Sender: |
|
Subject: |
|
From: |
|
Date: |
Mon, 23 Aug 1999 22:21:18 EDT |
Content-Type: |
text/plain; charset="us-ascii" |
MIME-Version: |
1.0 |
Reply-To: |
|
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
Art,
I think that question may be impossible to answer, because it is very
difficult, if not impossible, to tell if a marine species IS extinct. What
criterion could be used? No specimens collected in the past 50 years? What
would that prove, considering that less than 1% of the ocean floor has been
explored in the past 50 years? Slit shells were "known" for many years to be
extinct as a family, until a live one was brought up in a net. Not to
mention the coelacanth! Actually, it is impossible even to know with
certainty whether a marine species is truly "rare", because we have explored
so little of the ocean floor - as shown by the recent glut of Cypraea fultoni
on the market - a species that was "extremely rare" just last year! At the
recent COA convention, they were all over the place! It is much easier to
determine if a land snail has been exterminated from the one island it
occupied, or a fresh water mussel from the one river it lived in, than to
know if a species has been exterminated from the ocean! Also, it is far less
likely to happen in the ocean.
Paul M.
|
|
|