Evolutionary ancestor

[King Phenomenon]

Wikipedia-

More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.

My question?

Does anyone know the rough number of evolutionary ancestors of a species that can't be identified out of the 1.2 million species that are documented?

Question 2

What does 86% have not yet been described mean?

 

[epronovost]

What does 86% have not yet been described mean?

They have never been observed extansively in nature and haven't been disected or seen their body receive a necropsy. They haven't received an official place in taxonomy since to do that you require the prior.

 

[Daemon Sophic]

Can you give the source from which you got your statistics?

In the meantime though:
1. I seriously doubt it. Some fossil branches of the tree just end abruptly, while others my have convoluted branches, twists and turns before getting to today’s survivors.

2. It’s a rough guess. The vast majority of the life forms in that 10 to 14 million species guess are tiny plants, fungi, insects, and even bacteria. The ballpark estimate is from how often we encounter a new species given time and area of wilderness searched. Then, looking at how much wilderness remains in the world you can very roughly ballpark how many new species we have yet to encounter. Other factors weigh in too, but that’s the gist of it. A new organism isn’t named until it has been catalogued with its features and habitat, and checked to see that nobody has catalogued the same thing earlier.

Or at least I think so. I’m not a field biologist.

 

[King Phenomenon]

They have never been observed extansively in nature and haven't been disected or seen their body receive a necropsy.

Holy cow looks like scientist have their work cut out

 

[King Phenomenon]

Can you give the source from which you got your statistics?

In the meantime though:
1. I seriously doubt it. Some fossil branches of the tree just end abruptly, while others my have convoluted branches, twists and turns before getting to today’s survivors.

2. It’s a rough guess. The vast majority of the life forms in that 10 to 14 million species guess are tiny plants, fungi, insects, and even bacteria. The ballpark estimate is from how often we encounter a new species given time and area of wilderness searched. Then, looking at how much wilderness remains in the world you can very roughly ballpark how many new species we have yet to encounter. Other factor weigh in too, but that’s the gist of it. A new organism isn’t named until it has been catalogued with its features and habitat, and checked to see that nobody has catalogued the same thing earlier.

Or at least I think so. I’m not a field biologist.

1. Oh yeah I agree I was just curious as to learn if anybody had a number for Surely one exists

 

[epronovost]

Holy cow looks like scientist have their work cut out

And its a race against time to do it becase many of these species are very rare and are at risk of disapearing in the next decades.

 

[sun rise]

Holy cow looks like scientist have their work cut out

The basics are well known but science is not complete. New discoveries are being made all the time.

Here's just one tiny example: USA Today: New Method Traces Ancestry Back Thousands of Years

 

[rational experiences]

If science says, standing on an ICE saved Planet Earth gases/heavens, with spatial vacuum, and life evolved to who we are today about evolution, none of those dead bodies in our past are even owned by us today.

If you said to science, how about saying as a real human thinker does, every body that is natural today in our climatic conditions is a part of life in its bio diversity, and any body you look at is not yours to claim yours by thinking as a bio human life, far superior in its consciousness about all other bodies?

For in fact a story telling idea to self, consciousness, human being life and self superiority statement is a claim to your own destruction, rationally.

Everything today exists today in its most highest and also natural form along with self.

A rational human would claim gratefulness for every other body existing today, without researching and theorising on how to be destroyed like all the bodies he looks at, discusses that are actually dead/destroyed, removed and gone.

Lucky for us there must be more alive cells and natural bodies than what had been removed or died or were destroyed rationally, for the bodies that are inclusive is, the cold spatial body, the vacuum that cools everything. The huge body of gas mass with which everything exists within to also be included.

Versus some dead/destroyed things, that might quote to a Destroyer science psyche, how to destroy the living, yet the Heavenly gas mass which is involved in all quotes also keeps us alive whilst science tries to have us destroyed by "looking back" and looking at dead things, when the human lawful tribunal said it was illegal to impose thoughts in that form of conscious format.

Actually.

 

[Valjean]

Wikipedia-

More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.

My question?

Does anyone know the rough number of evolutionary ancestors of a species that can't be identified out of the 1.2 million species that are documented?

Can't all species be traced back to a common ancestor?

Question 2

What does 86% have not yet been described mean?[/QUOTE]Only rarely does a species leave fossil evidence, and only rarely do scientists find what fossils there are.
Even today, any exploratory expedition will uncover new species. We haven't even catalogued the species that currently exist. What species existed ten million years ago that we don't know of is anyone's guess.

 

[Valjean]

Holy cow looks like scientist have their work cut out

Every question answered generates a dozen more questions.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

What does 86% have not yet been described mean?

I think you mean, “have not been discovered”?

That varies widely among researchers, actually.

Only 1.2 million species have been discovered and described, but there are an estimated 10-14 million species yet-to-be found. Hence, around 86%. However.....

Some researchers claim that number could be as high as 100,000,000!......

Every year, scientists discover / find an average of 10,000 new species....every year. And that amount — averaging 10,000 per annum — has not changed in years! That indicates there are many more living things to be found!!

 

[SomeRandom]

I think you mean, “have not been discovered”?

That varies widely among researchers, actually.

Only 1.2 million species have been discovered and described, but there are an estimated 10-14 million species yet-to-be found. Hence, around 86%. However.....

Some researchers claim that number could be as high as 100,000,000!......

Every year, scientists discover / find an average of 10,000 new species....every year. And that amount — averaging 10,000 per annum — has not changed in years! That indicates there are many more living things to be found!!

I’ve read that the ocean is vastly unexplored (for now.) Something like 80 -90 percent or something.
Correct?
So does that increase the potential for discovering new species on top of that?

 

[Hockeycowboy]

I’ve read that the ocean is vastly unexplored (for now.) Something like 80 -90 percent or something.
Correct?
So does that increase the potential for discovering new species on top of that?

No doubt!
The ocean’s potential is one reason I believe the total number of extant species is far higher than the 14,000,000 number.

I don’t know about 100-million-species number, though!

 

[SomeRandom]

No doubt!
The ocean’s potential is one reason I believe the total number of extant species is far higher than the 14,000,000 number.

I don’t know about 100-million-species number, though!

Whoa!

 

[Valjean]

I’ve read that the ocean is vastly unexplored (for now.) Something like 80 -90 percent or something.
Correct?
So does that increase the potential for discovering new species on top of that?

Literally every survey of deep sea life comes up with new species; same with rainforest surveys. New species are discovered all the time

Not all species are large and noticeable. Many are furtive or nocturnal. Many are known to locals but never described by science.

We discover new species all the time. All you have to do is look. Don't assume the ants under your driveway or that spider in the corner have been described by science.

Amazing Discoveries in the Amazon: New Species Found Every 3 Days Over Last Decade
2019 new species: Scientists discovered 71. Here are some of their favorites - CNN

 

[exchemist]

Wikipedia-

More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.

My question?

Does anyone know the rough number of evolutionary ancestors of a species that can't be identified out of the 1.2 million species that are documented?

Question 2

What does 86% have not yet been described mean?

Your first question does not seem to make sense. Evolution does not move in a series of discrete jumps from one defined ‘ancestor’ to the next , allowing you to add up how many ‘steps’ there have been. It’s pretty much a continuum. The ancestors identified by palaeontology are a series of snapshots, provided by the fossils we are lucky enough to have found, in the course of this continuum. In between each pair of identified ancestors are innumerable generations of gradually changing variations.

 

[Valjean]

Whoa!

Are we discussing Eohippus, now?