Primarily aquatic species, like crocodiles and turtles, are among the most vulnerable - via healthing_ca health healthing healthnews reptiles extinction
The threat to reptiles was previously unknown because they've been excluded from many other extinction studies. GETTY
More than one in five of the world’s reptile species face extinction, according to a comprehensive new study. Primarily aquatic species, like crocodiles and turtles, are among the most vulnerable. “We would lose a combined 15.6 billion years of evolutionary history if each of the 1,829 threatened reptiles became extinct,” co-the study’s author Neil Cox. “This is evolution that we could never get back. It would be a devastating loss.”
This number is actually smaller than the number of amphibians and mammals that are threatened, but the threat to reptiles was previously unknown because they’ve been excluded from many other extinction studies. This is in part because of their specific conservation needs — many reptile species live in arid regions, the study points out. But it’s actually the reptiles living in forests, not deserts, that face the strongest extinction threats — something the researchers say they didn’t expect.
Climate change also reduces the amount of time reptiles can forage for food, skewing natural sex ratios in some species that have temperature-dependent sex determination.
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