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New Estimate Suggests 5.5M Species On Earth, Not 30-100M

Posted by timothy on from the depends-how-you-count dept.

An anonymous reader writes "How many species share our planet? According to a recalculation by an international research team, the number is significantly lower than we thought — only around 5.5 million."

2 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Re:from the depends-how-you-count dept by publiclurker · · Score: 5, Informative

    Please turn in your geek badge at the door. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code

  2. Reading comprehension fail by Comboman · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article:

    [The new estimate] takes into account plants and animals but, like previous studies, it excludes bacteria ...

    They did not "remove a whole group". The previous estimates of 30 to 100 million species also did not include bacteria.

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