The Museum

As far as the author knows (which is not very far), none of the animals

below are in the described state at the time this story was written.

I have the honor of running the biggest museum in the solar system. Situated on Mars, the Sun's World Endangered Rare Vulnerable Extinct Museum (SWERVEM) covers an area of 11.2 square kilometers. It is forty floors high with eight elevators. A glass dome graces the roof and provides one of the best views of the Martian landscape. The dome also holds the overflow section of the insect display.

Each animal species that was endangered, extinct, rare, or vulnerable had a picture, a skeleton (or part of one), a stuffed version (if possible) and three or four paragraphs of information. For plants and fungi it was pretty much the same thing except instead of a skeleton or a fuzzy, glass-eyed model, there would sometimes be the actual plant or fungus or a fossil of one.

Not only is SWERVEM the largest museum, it is also expanding much faster than any other museum. We get about fifty new entries each day and about twenty new displays are put up. Scientists say that for every species that survives today, there are at least three hundred extinct species (3160 estimate). In a year or two, the museum will have construction crews scurrying all over trying to add on new wings. In a century or two, SWERVEN will unavoidably become the largest building in the solar system.

I have an extremely important job today but it will not start for another two hours so I can spend some time wandering among the displays. The bottlenose dolphin (tursiops truncatus) died out in 2014 from pollution and fishing. The Spanish lynx (lynx pardina), all ready endangered long before humans reached Mars, became extinct in 2052. The sonoran pronghorn antelope (antilocarpa americana sonoriensis), though not yet extinct, there are only three left, all of whom are male. The southern bald eagle (haliaeetus leucocephaius leucocephalus) left Earth in 2084 despite enormous effort put in by the United States to save it. The snow leopard (panthera uncia), sought for its magnificent coat became extinct in 2166; Grevy's zebra (equus grevyi), also hunted for the skin, died out the year after. The African elephant (loxodonia africana), the Javan rhinoceros (rhinoceros sondaicius), and the Siberian tiger (panthera tigris altaica) were murdered to extinction for the tusks, horns, and paws. This occurred in 2193.

By the time the Y3K 'crisis' (nothing happened) ended, pet birds became incredibly popular. Let me read out the names of the victims: great green macaw (ara ambigua), golden parakeet (aratinga guarouba), kogai pheasant (syrmaticus kogai), mikado pheasant (syrmaticus mikado), St. Vincent parrot (amazona guildingii), and the list goes on and on and on. It's fifty-seven pages, size eight font, and three birds to a line to be exact.

Later on in 3111, the International Space Station IV, for reasons not yet known, crashed into the ground in the middle of the Serengeti and caused the extinction of three hundred twenty-seven species of plant and animal life. This event is said by some to trigger the mass starvation of the human race. The Earth was overpopulated, even though many had 'immigrated' to Mars. Food could not be produced fast enough so the population started going down as cities at a time died.