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Earth is home to 8.7m species
New estimate includes 7.8m animals, 300,000 plants and more than 600,000 types of fungi
London: A group of Canadian scientists claim to have worked out how many species there are on Earth — 8.7 million.
They reached the figure using an advanced mathematical model. Previous estimates ranged from three million to 100 million.
Zoologists and botanists have been cataloguing species for 250 years, but so far only 1.2 million have been logged. Each year 6,000 are discovered, but even at that rate, it would take another 1,200 years to find them all.
The new estimate includes 7.8 million animals, 300,000 plants and more than 600,000 types of fungi. Jesse Ausubel, of the Census of Marine Life, which carried out the research, said: "It's like saying we don't know how many people are in a country, but we know the number of counties and cities and villages, and that gives us a clearer picture of the number of individuals there are."
http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/earth-is-home-to-8-7m-species-1.856871
New estimate includes 7.8m animals, 300,000 plants and more than 600,000 types of fungi
London: A group of Canadian scientists claim to have worked out how many species there are on Earth — 8.7 million.
They reached the figure using an advanced mathematical model. Previous estimates ranged from three million to 100 million.
Zoologists and botanists have been cataloguing species for 250 years, but so far only 1.2 million have been logged. Each year 6,000 are discovered, but even at that rate, it would take another 1,200 years to find them all.
The new estimate includes 7.8 million animals, 300,000 plants and more than 600,000 types of fungi. Jesse Ausubel, of the Census of Marine Life, which carried out the research, said: "It's like saying we don't know how many people are in a country, but we know the number of counties and cities and villages, and that gives us a clearer picture of the number of individuals there are."
http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/earth-is-home-to-8-7m-species-1.856871
