The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural HistoryOver the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species - including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino - some already gone, others at the point of vanishing. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy and Elizabeth Kolbert's book urgently compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. |
Contents
Prologue | 1 |
The Luck of the Ammonites | 70 |
Selected Bibliography | 293 |
PhotoIllustration Credits | 305 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alvarez American ammonites amphibians animals Anthropocene auks Australia Barrier Reef bats BDFFP biologists Biology birds bones Caldeira called cave Charles Charles Darwin Chicago Press Climate Change Cohn-Haft Coral Reefs creatures Cretaceous Cuvier Darwin dinosaurs disappeared diversity E. O. Wilson earth Eciton burchellii Eldey elephants EVACC Evolution extinction rate forest fossil Geological Georges Cuvier giant global going golden frog graptolites Griffith Gubbio hundred invasive invasive species iridium island kilometres known Landman layer live look Lyell mammals mammoth marine mass extinction mastodon megafauna metres million years ago modern humans Museum naturalist Nature Neanderthals ocean acidification once Ordovician organisms Oxford Pääbo pair paleontologist percent plants plots population probably rainforest recent rhinos rock Rudwick Science seemed Silman sort species Suci tanks temperatures theory there’s thousand tiny tion told tree tropics University Press Wildlife wrote York Zalasiewicz