The sixth mass extinction book7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() Even after Charles Darwin published his influential book, On the Origin of Species, scientists didn’t grasp that human beings are capable of influencing the environment to the point where certain species die out. However, Cuvier believed that extinction is a slow, gradual, and somewhat random process. Cuvier and his contemporaries discovered prehistoric fossils of large mammals, such as the mastodon and the giant sloth, further legitimating the theory of extinction. It was Georges Cuvier, the influential naturalist, who first proposed that some species that lived thousands of years ago are no longer alive. Kolbert learned that, for most of the history of science, humans didn’t understand that some animals went extinct. ![]() ![]() Kolbert’s visit to Panama to study the golden frog inspired her to learn more about extinction and its place in the history of science. In Panama, for example, the population of golden frogs-once impossible to avoid-has dwindled to a few dozen. All over the world, different species are already going extinct, thanks to the declining amount of available undeveloped land, and the rising temperature. In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert studies the relationship between human beings and the environment, and concludes that human behavior is on the verge of causing (or may have already caused) a mass-extinction-the sixth in the history of the planet. ![]()
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