Most Species That Go Extinct In Modern Times Will Leave No Permanent Trace

Plants and Animals





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Only a tiny fraction of species are ever fossilized, and it seems very few alive today will be recorded. Merlin 74/Shutterstock

We already know that the current fossil record is incredibly incomplete. The conditions needed to preserve the remains of an animal after it dies are so specific that only a fraction of the billions of creatures to have walked this planet will have been turned to stone. But with hundreds, if not thousands of species currently threatened with extinction today, how many of them will be preserved in the fossil record for future researchers to discover?