On July 21, 2022, Beijing time, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) officially declared the extinction of the Chinese spoon-sturgeon, the Psephurus gladius.
Chinese spoon-sturgeon and its causes of extinction
Let's take a look at the Chinese spoon sturgeon and its extinction. Chinese spoon-sturgeon, also known as white sturgeon and Chinese swordfish, is the largest freshwater fish in China. Spoon sturgeon in the Mississippi River Basin of the United States belong to the spoon sturgeon family, and because they live in China, they are named Chinese spoon sturgeon.
Their body length is generally 2-3 meters, the longest body length can reach 7.5 meters, weight 200-300 kg, and their heads are very long, accounting for about 1/3 of the body length, the body is fusiform, the front half is relatively flat, the middle is thicker, and the back half is more flattened.
As a kind of fish in the spoon-sturgeon family, the Chinese spoon-sturgeon first appeared in the Cretaceous era, dating back more than 100 million years, is a very precious ancient animal, but also a national first-class protected animal in the mainland, known as the "giant panda in the water".
However, such a precious animal has completely disappeared from the earth, which is the "bad news" for China and the world. So what led to the extinction of the Chinese spoon sturgeon?
The first and most fundamental cause is human overfishing. In the 1960s and 1970s, the number of Chinese spoon sturgeon in the Yangtze River Basin was still very impressive, and the state had not yet included them in the protection list, and fishermen fished and traded heavily, resulting in their smaller and smaller numbers, although the policy of banning fishing on the Yangtze River in recent years was quite effective, but it was too late for chinese spoon sturgeon.
Secondly, it is the destruction of the water environment by economic development. With the development of the economy, a large number of factory wastewater has been discharged into the Yangtze River, the water quality of the Yangtze River Basin has been seriously polluted, and the biodiversity has also been seriously damaged. Moreover, damming the river also has a huge impact on the laying of fish eggs in female Chinese spoon-sturgeon back to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
Human destruction of the Planet's biodiversity
We can see that every time a cause of extinction of a species is mentioned, human beings are the culprit and cannot escape the blame. The 21st century has entered the third 10 years, and the world is more sci-fi: affected by climate change, Australian mountain fires are not extinguished, and hundreds of millions of animals have been killed; Garbage swirls appear in the North Pacific; Oil spills scarred the Niger Delta; West Virginia's mining areas leave bare hilltops; The Chinese spoon sturgeon has been extinct for 150 million years...
Much like the plot of a science fiction novel, Liu Cixin's science fiction novel "The Wandering Earth" begins: "In the beginning, no one cared about this disaster, it was just a mountain fire, a drought, the extinction of a species, the disappearance of a city, until this disaster was closely related to everyone." ”
The Chinese spoon sturgeon has survived on the earth for more than 100 million years, surviving tenaciously during the world's 5th mass extinction, but now it has completely disappeared in the 21st century when human civilization is developed.
So while human beings continue to occupy the living space of other species, will human beings themselves, as a species with a life cycle, completely disappear one day in the future?
Will humanity go extinct in the future?
In fact, many scientists have also considered this question, and the answer is yes, it is entirely possible that human beings themselves, as a species, will completely disappear from the earth like other species.
Human beings have flourished on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, human civilization has lasted for thousands of years, with the increasing development of science and technology, on the beautiful planet of the earth, human beings have left a lot of indelible marks. However, it is difficult to hope that the earth can become an eternal comfort for mankind.
Compared with the 13 billion-year-old galaxy where the earth is located, the journey of human beings is too short, although human beings are now the masters of the earth, but what human beings can adapt to is only the current earth environment, which does not represent the earth environment that has changed in the future.
Earth has experienced 5 mass extinctions before, the 5th mass extinction that is closest to us has made dinosaurs disappear from the earth forever, and now many scientists have warned that the earth may be in the early stages of the 6th mass extinction, and now more than one-third of the world's amphibian species are threatened with extinction, and 27,000 species disappear from the earth every year.
Many scientists are also worried that humanity may disappear completely in this mass extinction, and humanity is indeed facing many unprecedented challenges, such as the continuous rise of the global climate.
In addition to this challenge, there are many unknown challenges, such as the impact of an asteroid, and the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was due to the impact of the asteroid.
An asteroid with a diameter of 10-15 km is enough to trigger an extinction process: the fire formed after the impact turns the atmosphere into a large furnace, and the subsequent cooling of the Earth will cause almost all life on Earth to go extinct. In addition to asteroid impacts on Earth, there may also be disasters such as the engulfment of black holes, solar eruptions, and super-large volcanic eruptions.
What is currently determined is that the sun will become a red giant star in billions of years, when the life of the sun will end, the sun as the center of the solar system, once its life span is over, then all the planets and celestial bodies in the solar system will be swallowed up by the solar system or directly thrown out of the solar system, and the earth is also in it.
Since the demise of mankind is basically an inevitable consequence, what is the meaning of human existence? The significance of its survival is probably to prevent human beings from becoming extinct in advance because of their own activities.
To achieve this goal, we need to make a lot of efforts: to protect biological diversity, to model natural disasters and epidemics, to build safer and more sustainable cities, to control carbon emissions, to strengthen exchanges and cooperation among countries, to reduce wars and conflicts... In addition to this, we have to find another living planet in the universe and go beyond Earth.
Perhaps human beings can survive until billions of years later, before the sun becomes a red giant, has left the solar system, colonized extensively and fully in the milky way, obtained a huge living space, and changed the end of human demise.
This is not impossible.
However, this possibility is based on the efforts of countless generations of human beings now and in the future, if human beings continue to seek only their own development, ignore the earth's environment, ignore the diversity of biological species, and let this kind of species extinction event like the extinction of the Chinese spoon sturgeon continue to occur, then there is no way to wait for the future development of science and technology to the point of migrating to the galaxy, human beings will be destroyed in their own hands, and the time of extinction may really be greatly advanced.
Resources:
Leaf far away. When will humanity eventually become extinct? [J]Today's Digest, 2020(24).
Author: Qiao Mu Editor: Wei Yang