"Our life is made by the death of others"

Leonardo da Vinci, arguably the greatest visionary, scribbled this line in his notebook (vol.2) some 500 years ago. Naturally, countless scholars are nowadays pondering what this simple yet powerful statement means. Surely, they have written volumes.

I chanced upon the line while watching a Science channel program about extinction. And although I clearly doubt that's what da Vinci intended (there was no real concept of extinction or evolution for that matter until the 1800s), I thought it used in a very befitting manner.

Further reading resulted in me stumbling upon an article called "A Mathematical Model for Mass Extinction" (Newman, Mark) where the following scientific observations can be found:

"Of all the species that have lived on the Earth, since life first appeared here 3 billion years ago, only about one in a thousand is still living today. All the others, the vast majority, became extinct..."

Curious isn't it? What's even more curious is that extinction apparently has aided evolution throughout the eons. "The population and repopulation of an ecological niche by species after species allows for the testing of a much wider range of survival strategies than the slower process of phyletic transformation by which a species gradually adapts its morphology and behavior to its surroundings." We are literally the result of the death of others. Many many others.

"(This) leads us to some crucial questions about the process, the most fundamental of which is this: is extinction a natural part of the evolution process, or is it simply a chance result of occasional catastrophes?"

Whether by design or happenstance, something, some force, some chain of events has been skimming life and we happen to be the froth that's left behind. It seems fortunate. However, as the article points out, "there is nothing... to suggest that the species alive at present are special in any way. Presumably they too will become extinct... and make way for successors themselves."

Don't you love a happy ending?