Why extinction is sometimes good

Extinction is natural.  Healthy even.  You can learn/research all about it.  It's called background extinction. That being said, extinction rates have shot up in modern times, increasing exponentially since the industrial revolution.  I am definitely not that smart, but even I can see the connections.  This is bad.  Even with our propensity to ruin habitats, we should be more careful about what species we destroy, especially in the tropics, because that biodiversity provides a lot of our medical resources.  So if you're too selfish to help animals and plants out of the kindness of your heart, do it for your health.  We get drugs from those things.

That being said, I'm also of the opinion that we should appreciate some of the things we never had to compete with.  Like Dunkleosteus.

Dunkleosteus is a prehistoric member of the extinct class Placodermi.  Placodermi means plate skinned, and you'll see why.

This is what Dunkleosteus looked like:

Would you go swimming in the ocean if you knew that thing was down there somewhere?  No.  That thing is terrifying.  The force of that bite would be around 8000lbs/square inch [right in league with T-rex].  It was over 30 feet long and found in shallow seas, right where you'd want to swim.

Dunkleosteus made a guest appearance in Dinotopia, for those of us who can't contain our nerdiness [It is an awesome book, I hope all of you have].  The Fish that guarded the Diamond cave, which was the entrance to the World Beneath, was a dunkleosteus [and please don't judge me for not even having to look that up].  It attacked the Remora.

A lot of extinct species are being revived in awful movies, like Megalodon.  This giant shark was made to look truly ridiculous in Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus and Mega Shark versus Crocosaurus.  Painful.  The shark wouldn't have had the brain capacity to realize it should be embarrassed, so I will have to be embarrassed for it.

Moral of this, if you're going to revive extinct species in the entertainment business, do it like Dinotopia, not like Mega Shark.  You will turn an impressive predator into a laughing stock.