[bwestergard]

We haven't even identified all of the bird species, and many prevalent bird species don't have complete life histories.

And that's before we talk about botany, which has vast frontiers that remain unexplored.

So we are certainly not "too late for the earth", unless we drive these species to extinction before we are able to study them.

[gmuslera]

It is a problem that will be eventually solved, either because we discovered the remaining species, or that the unknown ones are all already (and probably recently enough) extinct, or that we run out of explorers/humans.

But I'm not sure what will happen first.