Biodiversity
Biodiversity
!An example of the biodiversity of [fungi in a forest in North Saskatchewan (in this photo, there are also leaf lichens and mosses).](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/FungiofSaskatchewan.JPG/250px-FungiofSaskatchewan.JPG)
Biodiversity
Since life began on Earth, six major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic aeon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion. In this period, the majority of multicellular phyla first appeared. The next 400 million years included repeated, massive biodiversity losses. Those events have been classified as mass extinction events. In the Carboniferous, rainforest collapse may have led to a great loss of plant and animal life. The Permian–Triassic extinction event, 251 million years ago, was the worst; vertebrate recovery took 30 million years.
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!Shown in a museum, various models of species across various taxa and orders visualize the variety of life on earth.
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