The Malayan sun bear is the smallest bear in the world and is active only at night. It spends its days sleeping in tree nests and basking in the sun.
Extinct species take 10 million years to rebuild, scientists
say
Extinct species take 10 million years to rebuild, scientists
say Scientists have now discovered that it takes about
10 million years after a plant or animal becomes extinct for
anything quite like it to appear again. This research shows that
the Earth may have a "speed limit" on its rate of recovery and that
there is an underlying "heart-beat" to life that has a fundamental
rhythm. To uncover this result, scientists studied the fossil
remains of hard-shelled animal species to discover when they
appeared and disappeared on the planet over the past 530 million
years. They applied mathematics developed for astrophysics to
calculate their result. This finding confirms the fears that many
scientists have about the increasing loss of plant and animal life
on Earth. Biologists now estimate that up to one-half of the known
animal and plant species in the world could be wiped out within the
next 100 years. Just stopping extinction now will not bring
everything back to normal. The Earth requires time for the fabric
of the ecosystem to be rebuilt, and this may take a long
time. 9 MARCH 2000
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