Except where dinosaurs or media-friendly modern species are in play, extinction barely rates a yawn. But here is an interesting item by Veronika Meduna at New Scientist, on a plan to return an ecosystem to a previous time:
We are inside the old water reservoir for New Zealand’s capital, Wellington. Over the past two decades, it has undergone an extraordinary transformation, from urban utility to ecological haven. During the day, large forest parrots called kaka swoop over tuatara, the only survivors of a prehistoric group of reptiles. Night-time visitors have a good chance of crossing paths with a little spotted kiwi. Hihi – small black, white and yellow birds that had once disappeared from New Zealand’s main islands – are flourishing.
What you won’t see are many mammals: virtually all have been eradicated. Mice (and humans) are the only exception and pest control keeps mouse numbers low. (paywall) More.
Before human introductions, bats were the only terrestrial mammals in New Zealand.
To really understand evolution, we need also to learn much more about stasis and extinction.
It will be most interesting to see how well the project works. It almost seems like a lab test. We tend to think of extirpations/extinctions in relation to threatened species, but rats are not typically threatened and adapt easily.
One also predicts that the government of New Zealand will lose the war on cats. Cats infest the human mind, which is the most powerful form of parasitism ever developed.
See also: The dinosaurs died of darkness and cold (not so much any of the other things listed )
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Of related interest to bats. Bats popped out of the supposed ‘evolutionary woodwork’ about 55 million years ago. They first appear as a radically new, yet fully developed, form. A form which was not in any way significantly different from modern bats. Their debut in the fossil record is sudden, complete, and lacks intermediaries as the following video and articles make clear:
Australonycteris clarkae is one of the oldests bat ever found in the fossil record at 54.6 million years old. The ear bones of Australonycteris show that it could navigate using echolocation just like modern bats.
Of note; The bat’s echometer has more accuracy, more efficiency, less power consumption and less size than any artificial sonar constructed by engineers.
Here’s a diagram showing bats and dolphins unexpectedly grouped together on the same gene tree based on Prestin sequence comparisons.
And here is something that it just plain weird
Verse:
In 2016, the then PM John Key made the rash promise to exterminate all non-native wild mammals in NZ, thereby bringing back a natural environment for native species.
His replacement Bill English is wisely quieter on the subject. To eradicate every rat, feral cat,dog,pig and deer, from the NZ bush is, quite frankly impossible.
More realistically NZ has done this erradication process on several small coastal islets, since the early 80s, and these have saved many critically endangered species, kakapo, tuatara, takahe and Black Robin amongst them.
“Before human introductions, bats were the only terrestrial mammals in New Zealand.”
This is quite consistent with Noah’s Flood. Terrestrial animals wouldn’t have been able to reach islands that were isolated from the mainland, or those that formed, after the flood.
H’mm, were trout eliminated from the reservoir, etc?
aarceng,
You do realise NZ is home to numerous flightless birds. Five kinds of endangered Kiwis can’t fly, did they hitch a ride on God’s good graces after the flood? Nine species of extinct Moa (destroyed by the Maori) probably arrived via, what, Thomas Cook? Also extant species of rails, crakes, and coots, could also not fly from the Ark, I suppose they swam.
And how did NZ have a series of native freshwater fish then? Did they swim the salty seas from Australia, and how did any freshwater fish survive the salty flood for that matter?
Your ‘one off’, biogeographical observation about bat mammals, needs updating, from Genesis to the 21st Century. I suggest you start with the two chapters dedicated to biogeography in ‘Origins’, by Darwin.
Amazin! Darwin living 160 or so years ago, is more informed on the distribution of species worldwide, and why, than ‘aarceng’, who has the inter-net at h/her fingertips.
rvb8, here is an amazing testimony that you may find interesting: