Re:Building an Ark for the Anthropocene
by ThisIBereave on Sunday September 28, 2014 @04:15PM
(#8380783)
From Wikipedia[1], "In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died." So if your measure for bio-diversity is the number of unique animal species, it dropped by half at each mass extinction event. The events only reflect a drop in the diversity of animal species as this is an "easily observed, biologically complex component of the biosphere", so the overall change in bio-diversity could be lesser or greater.
Obviously "mass extinction" does not mean "total extinction of all life", or else we wouldn't be here. Do we have any idea to what degree the bio-diversity of the planet was reduced in prior occurrences?