Chapter 2 - Admir Basic

In Chapter 2 of The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert introduces the fact that people nowadays learn about extinction fairly quickly. Kids get figurines of dinosaurs and quickly learn that the massive creatures no longer exist and are extinct. While people today take their knowledge of extinction for granted, this was not always the case and the idea of extinction is a relatively new concept. Prior to the concept of extinction, ancient Greek scientist Aristotle ironically wrote a series of books called History of Animals without even considering the possibility that animals have a history. According to page 23, “Pliny’s Natural History includes descriptions of animals that are real and descriptions of animals that are fabulous, but no descriptions of animals that are extinct.” In the eighteenth century, mammoth bones were found in Russia and many theories arose about what kind of animal the bones came from. Many believed that the bones appeared to appear from elephants. However, it was obvious to many that “there clearly were no elephants in contemporary Russia” leaving scientists confused. It was decided that the bones had been washed away from somewhere as a result of the great flood of Genesis. The first time the idea that the mammoth was an extinct species came largely from naturalist Cuvier. Prior to Cuvier, many naturalists and scientists debated about what animals the bones of the mammoth derived from. Generally, most naturalists agreed that the bones looked like an elephant but the teeth were much larger and more carnivorous. The body volume of the mammoth trounces the elephant’s body size and there was a debate about the differing characteristics of the mammoth. Cuvier believed that both mammoths found in Russia and Ohio were both lost species and that they weren't the same. Cuvier said on page 30, “if there were four extinct species, Cuvier declared there must be others.” [(E) He foreshadowed a whole world before humanity of animals that were long lost in history. This must have shocked many naturalists to wrap their heads around such a possibility of a lost world. This connects to the APES theme that science is a process. Over time, fossils were found of historic animals. After many fossils were recorded, time gaps would be found and the animals were found to be extinct.] Over the duration of the chapter, Cuvier found more extinct species to support his discovery of extinction and gave the mammoth its name, mastodonte, to publish a paper in Paris. “In 1812, Cuvier published a four-volume compendium of his work on fossil animals: Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes (Page 38).” Cuvier gained the admiration of Napoleon and the idea of extinction spread quickly over the Atlantic. His list of extinct species and the idea revolutionized the way naturalists think about the history of animals.