The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Given enough time for “every variation, even the slightest” to accumulate, new species would emerge from the old.

“We take advantage of its most sacred instincts to waylay it, and in depriving the parent of life, we doom the helpless offspring to the most miserable of deaths, that by hunger. If this is not cruelty, what is?” Newton argued for a ban on hunting during breeding season, and his lobbying resulted in one of the first laws aimed at what today would be called wildlife protection: the Act for the Preservation of Sea Birds.

Luis reasoned that the longer it had taken the clay layer to accumulate, the more cosmic dust would have fallen; thus the more iridium it would contain.

I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines.