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Sixth Extinction Essay

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In Elizabeth Kolbert’s book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, she details her travels around the world which she has taken to learn more about the rapidly declining populations of several species. With each chapter centered on a different species, Kolbert illustrates the picture of a sixth mass extinction, one anthropogenically caused, a feature that distinguishes this extinction from the five previous ones. Certain species all across the world witness their populations dwindling to abismal numbers, and in some cases, extinction in the wild. Scientists and researchers attempt to understand the causes of the decreasing population, but oftentimes do not act quickly enough to prevent the massive die offs. This book correlates to our …show more content…
Correlating with our lectures on evolution and natural selection, a species ability to adapt to a new environment determines whether it will survive or live. The discovery of the mastodon fossil led Georges Cuvier to conclude that the large creatures did not become extinct as a result of a failure to adapt to the environment, but rather that a great event had taken place to wipe the mastodons from the earth. The mastodons had been ideally suited to their environments and there did not exist a reasonable explanation as to why they would suddenly disappear, except for the idea of a catastrophic event. Similarly, ammonites were also a good fit for their environment, however they also became extinct. The evidence points to how a single event changes the environment in a rapid manner so that species cannot adapt in time, causing them to die off rapidly. Also, several references made throughout the book detail Charles Darwin and his understanding of mass extinction. During class, we focused heavily on Darwin and the conclusions he drew as a result of his voyages abroad, and this book also goes into detail on his perception of mass extinction given his observations. Darwin attempted to reconcile his concept of natural selection with the idea of a mass

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