Chapter 2 Jaquan Ellis

         Kolbert begins to talk about how the concept extinction is so well-known, even children know about it as soon as they are playing with toy dinosaurs. She even talks about how scientists from the mid 18th century didn’t even consider the extinction of animals. It was only in the late 18th century when a man by the name of Georges Cuvier proposed the concept of extinction by studying the fossils of the American mastodon and concluded that they have died in the distant past which caused people to have harsh judgements about him. Many years later Cuvier was praised for his discovery. This begs the question, why did people did accept the idea of extinction? Could it be because the species had too much of a huge population for everyone to be killed? Kolbert heads to the Paris Museum of Natrual History and meets the director, Pascal Tassy. Tassy shows Kolbert the remains of the mastodon, a mammoth and a elephant. She even shows her a marine reptile fossil that Cuvier discovered. Curvier’s beliefs of extinction carried its way towards future scientific research. This can be related to the theme of science is a process because over time people have been getting to learn even more about what’s happening to the species around our world as many ideals are being presented throughout history.