ABSTRACT

Palaeontology teaches us that many species of animals were widespread and common during long periods of the Earth’s history, but became extinct at some point in time. Their remains can be studied in museums of natural history. The course of evolution is described as a game between the population of organisms and Nature. The evolutionary strategy of a species is its genetic composition: each genotype within a population has a range of possible responses/tolerances for a set of environments, and the response of the population – and the species as a whole – is the sum of the responses of its component genotypes. The strategy of Nature with which the species must cope is an unpredictable series of changes. The choice of the best strategy depends on the strategy of Nature. Human population growth, combined with the destruction of the natural environment and the resulting pollution of what remains, must get the world leaders to think of the future.