- Joined
- Apr 13, 2018
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_locust
"The Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus) is an extinct species of locust that ranged through the western half of the United States and some western portions of Canada until the end of the 19th century. Sightings often placed their swarms in numbers far larger than any other locust species, with one famous sighting in 1875 estimated at 198,000 square miles (510,000 km2) in size (greater than the area of California), weighing 27.5 million tons and consisting of some 12.5 trillion insects, the greatest concentration of animals ever speculatively guessed, according to Guinness World Records.[2]
Less than 30 years later, the species was apparently extinct. The last recorded sighting of a live specimen was in 1902 in southern Canada.[3] Because a creature so ubiquitous was not expected to become extinct, very few samples were ever collected (though a few preserved remains have been found in Grasshopper Glacier, Montana). A second species of North American locust, the High Plains locust (Dissosteira longipennis) reached plague proportions in the 1930s but is now very rare,[citation needed] leaving North America as the only continent without a major locust species, apart from Antarctica."
I've always wondered what happened to these things that they went extinct. They used to be the largest collective of organisms seen in one group, then seemingly over overnight they just up and disappeared, and nobody knows why. What happened to them?
"The Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus) is an extinct species of locust that ranged through the western half of the United States and some western portions of Canada until the end of the 19th century. Sightings often placed their swarms in numbers far larger than any other locust species, with one famous sighting in 1875 estimated at 198,000 square miles (510,000 km2) in size (greater than the area of California), weighing 27.5 million tons and consisting of some 12.5 trillion insects, the greatest concentration of animals ever speculatively guessed, according to Guinness World Records.[2]
Less than 30 years later, the species was apparently extinct. The last recorded sighting of a live specimen was in 1902 in southern Canada.[3] Because a creature so ubiquitous was not expected to become extinct, very few samples were ever collected (though a few preserved remains have been found in Grasshopper Glacier, Montana). A second species of North American locust, the High Plains locust (Dissosteira longipennis) reached plague proportions in the 1930s but is now very rare,[citation needed] leaving North America as the only continent without a major locust species, apart from Antarctica."
I've always wondered what happened to these things that they went extinct. They used to be the largest collective of organisms seen in one group, then seemingly over overnight they just up and disappeared, and nobody knows why. What happened to them?
