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14 books match the query 'Extinction (Biology)'
Catastrophic Thinking
Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the AnthropoceneDavid Sepkoski
University of Chicago Press, 2020
We live in an age in which we are repeatedly reminded—by scientists, by the media, by popular culture—of the looming threat of mass extinction. We’re told that human activity is currently producing a sixth mass extinction, perhaps of even greater magnitude than the five previous geological catastrophes that drastically altered life on Earth. Indeed, there is a very real concern that the human species may itself be poised to go the way of the dinosaurs, victims of the most recent mass extinction some 65 million years ago.
How we interpret the causes and consequences of extinction and their ensuing moral imperatives is deeply embedded in the cultural values of any given historical moment. And, as David Sepkoski reveals, the history of scientific ideas about extinction over the past two hundred years—as both a past and a current process—is implicated in major changes in the way Western society has approached biological and cultural diversity. It seems self-evident to most of us that diverse ecosystems and societies are intrinsically valuable, but the current fascination with diversity is a relatively recent phenomenon. In fact, the way we value diversity depends crucially on our sense that it is precarious—that it is something actively threatened, and that its loss could have profound consequences. In Catastrophic Thinking, Sepkoski uncovers how and why we learned to value diversity as a precious resource at the same time as we learned to think catastrophically about extinction.
Dancing at the Dead Sea
Tracking the World's Environmental HotspotsAlanna Mitchell
University of Chicago Press, 2005
Combining scientific curiosity with travel and adventure, Dancing at the Dead Sea takes the reader on an intimate tour through the world's environmental hotspots. Readers join Mitchell as she tracks the spectacular biodiversity of regions as extraordinary as the island of Madagascar, the rain forests of Suriname, the parched oases of Jordan, the Arctic desert of Banks Island, the volcanic crests of Iceland, and, ultimately, the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin conducted his famous research. Along the way, Mitchell introduces us to the numerous scientists and conservationists who are working to protect these endangered places. She also chronicles the courageous efforts of everyday men and women in these regions as they try to convince governments to turn the world's hotspots into environmentally protected areas.
Ultimately, Mitchell's travels around the world compel her to ponder our shelf life as a species in the grand evolutionary scheme of the planet. She wonders what Darwin would make of the profound ecological destruction she witnesses. Is the human race suicidal? What can help our species avert extinction? Posing tough and cutting questions such as these, Dancing at the Dead Sea is a must-read for aficionados of good science writing and travel literature alike.
Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood
Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian ArcticCharlotte Wrigley
University of Minnesota Press, 2023
Exploring one of the greatest potential contributors to climate change—thawing permafrost—and the anxiety of extinction on an increasingly hostile planet
Climate scientists point to permafrost as a “ticking time bomb” for the planet, and from the Arctic, apocalyptic narratives proliferate on the devastating effects permafrost thaw poses to human survival. In Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood, Charlotte Wrigley considers how permafrost—and its disappearance—redefines extinction to be a lack of continuity, both material and social, and something that affects not only life on earth but nonlife, too.
Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood approaches the topic of thawing permafrost and the wild new economies and mitigation strategies forming in the far north through a study of the Sakha Republic, Russia’s largest region, and its capital city Yakutsk, which is the coldest city in the world and built on permafrost. Wrigley examines people who are creating commerce out of thawing permafrost, including scientists wishing to recreate the prehistoric “Mammoth steppe” ecosystem by eventually rewilding resurrected woolly mammoths, Indigenous people who forage the tundra for exposed mammoth bodies to sell their tusks, and government officials hoping to keep their city standing as the ground collapses under it. Warming begets thawing begets economic activity— and as a result, permafrost becomes discontinuous, both as land and as a social category, in ways that have implications for the entire planet. Discontinuity, Wrigley shows, eventually evolves into extinction.
Offering a new way of defining extinction through the concept of “discontinuity,” Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood presents a meditative and story-focused engagement with permafrost as more than just frozen ground.
Ecocide
A Short History of the Mass Extinction of SpeciesFranz Broswimmer
Pluto Press, 2002
Extinction and Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds
David W. Steadman
University of Chicago Press, 2006
Reconstructing the avian world in the same way archeologists re-create ancient human societies, David Steadman—a leading authority on tropical Pacific avian paleontology—has spent the past two decades in the field, digging through layers of soil in search of the bones that serve as clues to the ancient past of island bird communities. His years of indefatigable research and analysis are the foundation for Extinction and Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds, a monumental study of the landbirds of tropical Pacific islands—especially those from Fiji eastward to Easter Island—and an intricate history of the patterns and processes of island biology over time.
Using information gleaned from prehistoric specimens, Steadman reconstructs the birdlife of tropical Pacific islands as it existed before the arrival of humans and in so doing corrects the assumption that small, remote islands were unable to support rich assemblages of plants and animals. Easter Island, for example, though devoid of wildlife today, was the world’s richest seabird habitat before Polynesians arrived more than a millennium ago. The forests of less isolated islands in the Pacific likewise teemed with megapodes, rails, pigeons, parrots, kingfishers, and songbirds at first human contact.
By synthesizing data from the distant past, Steadman hopes to inform present conservation programs. Grounded in geology, paleontology, and archeology, but biological at its core, Extinction and Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds is an exceptional work of unparalleled scholarship that will stimulate creative discussions of terrestrial life on oceanic islands for years to come.
Extinctions
From Dinosaurs to YouCharles Frankel
University of Chicago Press, 2024
On its face, the story of mass extinction on Earth is one of unavoidable disaster. Asteroid smashes into planet; goodbye dinosaurs. Planetwide crises seem to be beyond our ability to affect or evade. Extinctions argues that geological history tells an instructive story, one that offers important signs for us to consider. When the asteroid struck, Charles Frankel explains, it set off a wave of cataclysms that wore away at the global ecosystem until it all fell apart. What if there had been a way to slow or even turn back these tides? Frankel believes that the answer to this question holds the key to human survival.
Human history, from the massacre of Ice Age megafauna to today’s industrial climate change, has brought the planet through another series of cataclysmic events. But the history of mass extinction together with the latest climate research, Frankel maintains, shows us a way out. If we curb our destructive habits, particularly our drive to kill and consume other species, and work instead to conserve what biodiversity remains, the Earth might yet recover. Rather than await decisive disaster, Frankel argues that we must instead take action to reimagine what it means to be human. As he eloquently explains, geological history reminds us that life is not eternal; we can disappear, or we can become something new and continue our evolutionary adventure.
Ghosts Behind Glass
Encountering Extinction in MuseumsDolly Jørgensen
University of Chicago Press, 2025
While it’s no longer possible to encounter a dodo in the wild, we can still come face-to-face with them in museums. The remains of extinct species—whether taxidermied, skeletal, drawn, or sculpted—stare back at us from display cases.
In this moving meditation on what’s lost and what endures, environmental historian Dolly Jørgensen visits natural history collections worldwide—from Shanghai to Philadelphia, from Edinburgh to Hobart, Australia—to understand the many ways that museums tell stories about extinction. She encounters extinct animals that are framed as cultural artifacts and as rare valuables, that are memorialized with lists, and that are brought to life through augmented reality. She draws our attention to creatures with prominent afterlives—passenger pigeons, giant moas, thylacines—as well as those that are less likely to be discussed or displayed. Throughout, Jørgensen examines the relationship between museums and the natural world, so readers can look more closely at exhibits about extinction, studying the displays for what is there, as well as what is missing. During a period of rapid species loss driven by humanity’s environmental impact, Ghosts Behind Glass asks what we can learn about our world from the presence of the extinct.
Human Impact on Ancient Environments
Charles L. Redman
University of Arizona Press, 1999
Imagining Extinction
The Cultural Meanings of Endangered SpeciesUrsula K. Heise
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Ursula K. Heise argues that understanding these stories and symbols is indispensable for any effective advocacy on behalf of endangered species. More than that, she shows how biodiversity conservation, even and especially in its scientific and legal dimensions, is shaped by cultural assumptions about what is valuable in nature and what is not. These assumptions are hardwired into even seemingly neutral tools such as biodiversity databases and laws for the protection of endangered species. Heise shows that the conflicts and convergences of biodiversity conservation with animal welfare advocacy, environmental justice, and discussions about the Anthropocene open up a new vision of multispecies justice. Ultimately, Imagining Extinction demonstrates that biodiversity, endangered species, and extinction are not only scientific questions but issues of histories, cultures, and values.
Nature's Ghosts
Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of EcologyMark V. Barrow, Jr.
University of Chicago Press, 2009
The rapid growth of the American environmental movement in recent decades obscures the fact that long before the first Earth Day and the passage of the Endangered Species Act, naturalists and concerned citizens recognized—and worried about—the problem of human-caused extinction.
As Mark V. Barrow reveals in Nature’s Ghosts, the threat of species loss has haunted Americans since the early days of the republic. From Thomas Jefferson’s day—when the fossil remains of such fantastic lost animals as the mastodon and the woolly mammoth were first reconstructed—through the pioneering conservation efforts of early naturalists like John James Audubon and John Muir, Barrow shows how Americans came to understand that it was not only possible for entire species to die out, but that humans themselves could be responsible for their extinction. With the destruction of the passenger pigeon and the precipitous decline of the bison, professional scientists and wildlife enthusiasts alike began to understand that even very common species were not safe from the juggernaut of modern, industrial society. That realization spawned public education and legislative campaigns that laid the foundation for the modern environmental movement and the preservation of such iconic creatures as the bald eagle, the California condor, and the whooping crane.
A sweeping, beautifully illustrated historical narrative that unites the fascinating stories of endangered animals and the dedicated individuals who have studied and struggled to protect them, Nature’s Ghosts offers an unprecedented view of what we’ve lost—and a stark reminder of the hard work of preservation still ahead.
Negative Life
The Cinema of ExtinctionSteven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay
Northwestern University Press, 2024
How films help us understand the inevitable death of Earth and humanity
Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction brings cinema studies, queer theory, and psychoanalysis into novel configuration around the concept of negative life, a sundering of human and nonhuman relations. Engaging a philosophical and cinematic corpus that rejects the pastoralism of “entanglement” or “enmeshment,” Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay counter ecocritical pieties and cut a new path for theory. They examine films by Julian Pölsler, Kelly Reichardt, Lee Isaac Chung, Mahesh Mathai, Paul Schrader, and others that exemplify the existential contradictions currently intensifying amid the sixth mass extinction. Each case study testifies formally and thematically to negative life as a structural condition of thought and film. Together, the cases reveal the unlivable dimension of life and art, where form, desire, and nonbelonging tarry with the future-oriented promise of ecostudies—where all that lives connects. Negative Life militates against this promise, showing that faith in connection is a dead end.
Quaternary Extinctions
A Prehistoric RevolutionEdited by Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein
University of Arizona Press, 1984
"May be regarded as a kind of standard encyclopedia for Pleistocene vertebrate paleontology for years to come." —American Scientist
"Should be read by paleobiologists, biologists, wildlife managers, ecologists, archeologists, and anyone concerned about the ongoing extinction of plants and animals." —Science
"Uncommonly readable and varied for watchers of paleontology and the rise of humankind." —Scientific American
"Represents a quantum leap in our knowledge of Pleistocene and Holocene palaeobiology. . . . Many volumes on our bookshelves are destined to gather dust rather than attention. But not this one." —Nature
"Two strong impressions prevail when first looking into this epic compendium. One is the judicious balance of views that range over the whole continuum between monocausal, cultural, or environmental explanations. The second is that both the data base and theoretical sophistication of the protagonists in the debate have improved by a quantum leap since 1967." —American Anthropologist
Seasick
Ocean Change and the Extinction of Life on EarthAlanna Mitchell
University of Chicago Press, 2009
We have long lorded over the ocean. But only recently have we become aware of the myriad life-forms beneath its waves. We now know that this delicate ecosystem is our life-support system; it regulates the earth’s temperatures and climate and comprises 99 percent of living space on earth. So when we change the chemistry of the whole ocean system, as we are now, life as we know it is threatened.
In Seasick, veteran science journalist Alanna Mitchell dives beneath the surface of the world’s oceans to give readers a sense of how this watery realm can be managed and preserved, and with it life on earth. Each chapter features a different group of researchers who introduce readers to the importance of ocean currents, the building of coral structures, or the effects of acidification. With Mitchell at the helm, readers submerge 3,000 feet to gather sea sponges that may contribute to cancer care, see firsthand the lava lamp–like dead zone covering 17,000 square kilometers in the Gulf of Mexico, and witness the simultaneous spawning of corals under a full moon in Panama.
The first book to look at the planetary environmental crisis through the lens of the global ocean, Seasick takes the reader on an emotional journey through a hidden realm of the planet and urges conservation and reverence for the fount from which all life on earth sprang.
Vanished Giants
The Lost World of the Ice AgeAnthony J. Stuart
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Long after the extinction of dinosaurs, when humans were still in the Stone Age, woolly rhinos, mammoths, mastodons, sabertooth cats, giant ground sloths, and many other spectacular large animals that are no longer with us roamed the Earth. These animals are regarded as “Pleistocene megafauna,” named for the geological era in which they lived—also known as the Ice Age.
In Vanished Giants: The Lost World of the Ice Age, paleontologist Anthony J. Stuart explores the lives and environments of these animals, moving between six continents and several key islands. Stuart examines the animals themselves via what we’ve learned from fossil remains, and he describes the landscapes, climates, vegetation, ecological interactions, and other aspects of the animals’ existence. Illustrated throughout, Vanished Giants also offers a picture of the world as it was tens of thousands of years ago when these giants still existed. Unlike the case of the dinosaurs, there was no asteroid strike to blame for the end of their world. Instead, it appears that the giants of the Ice Age were driven to extinction by climate change, human activities—especially hunting—or both. Drawing on the latest evidence provided by radiocarbon dating, Stuart discusses these possibilities. The extinction of Ice Age megafauna can be seen as the beginning of the so-called Sixth Extinction, which is happening right now. This has important implications for understanding the likely fate of present-day animals in the face of contemporary climate change and vastly increasing human populations.