Chapter 2 is about the origins of the concept of extinction. The idea of animals having gone extinct began with one man and one fossil. That man was Georges Cuvier and the fossil was that of a mastodon. The theme of this chapter is the scientific process. Initially the fossil's were believed to belong to living animal species such as an Elephant, a hippopotamus, or an undiscovered species. However, Cuvier proposed that they belonged to a long dead species of elephant-like creatures. The theory was accepted as soon as it had been published. Many believed the mastodon was still at large in the North American continent. It took time for people to turn to Cuvier's theory as the more logical theory regarding what creature the bones belonged to. This conveys how science is constantly changing and as new fossils, natural processes, and new theories are crafted our understanding deepens and more questions arise. Since, the origin of the concept of extinction has now put out there, then the next step would be to find out what could've caused organisms to go extinct.
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