🪲 Scientists Discover More Than 16,000 New Species Per Year

Of the 2.5 million species known to science, 15% have been identified  in the last 20 years, according to the researchers at the University of Arizona. This is the fastest rate of discovery of new species in the history of humanity.

From 2015 to 2020, scientists identified an average of about 16,000 new species each year. Roughly 10,000 of these were animals, around 2,500 were plants, and about 2,000 were fungi. The discovery of new species far outpaced extinctions, which was around 10 species annually.

Still, researchers believe that Earth’s true biodiversity is far greater than what science has documented so far. Their estimates suggest there could be up to 115,000 fish species—compared with about 42,000 currently known—and roughly 41,000 amphibian species, rather than the 9,000 described to date

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