From the Bookshelf of Bio-Nerds…

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert

Start date: December 22, 2015

Finish date: March 19, 2016

Discussion: Group Reads

Why we're reading this: 2016 Winter Group Read
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What Members Thought

Jan 26, 2015 Charlene rated it liked it

Shelves: general-science, ecology, evolution, biology

Extremely important book. I felt like the author could have grabbed my attention more than she did. I also think there were important points that could have been made that were not.Perhaps a challenge for another author with similar interests? There were some great sections, namely her discussions of the carbon levels in the sea and air, Neanderthals, and human's role in the extinction of other species (especially large species). I wanted a little something more from her discussions of Cuvier (i ...more

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Feb 12, 2016 Bill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ecology

A slightly inflated four stars.

Elizabeth Kolbert presents a lot of salient information about mass extinction events with particular emphasis on the present human-caused extinction cascade. While portions of the book present horrific information--notably about the possible human role in megafauna extinction between forty and fifteen thousand years ago--Kolbert's voice doesn't become strident; it remains steadfastly even throughout the book.

It's this evenness of tone that bothered me a little as ...more

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Sep 28, 2016 Cindy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Our world has experienced five extinctinctions, each caused by a sudden (in geologic time) transformation in the ecological landscape. The causes of the ecological changes were various...from meteor impact to ice sheets. When change occurs more rapidly than evolution can adapt species, some species will fall out (become extinct). We are in the midst of a sixth extinction, with many signs of change caused by human habitation of our planet. We're not just talking about our ravenous appetite for fo ...more

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Nov 03, 2014 Nola rated it it was amazing

Context makes this a great book. Planning also makes it a great book. But the writing makes it really fun to read.
It starts with current amphibian extinctions, then covers the idea of extinction (which was not considered a possibility until the 1800’s), the first recorded extinction of a species, the history of how the asteroid responsible for the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous was figured out, details on the Ordovician and Permian mass extinctions, the effects of ocean acidificati Context makes this a great book. Planning also makes it a great book. But the writing makes it really fun to read.
It starts with current amphibian extinctions, then covers the idea of extinction (which was not considered a possibility until the 1800’s), the first recorded extinction of a species, the history of how the asteroid responsible for the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous was figured out, details on the Ordovician and Permian mass extinctions, the effects of ocean acidification, how organisms react to rising global temperatures and to fragmented habitat, the effects of invasive species, and the background of current and then prehistoric extinctions of large mammals. The writing is so good that the topics are much more interesting than expected. There are adventures throughout and they are woven so seamlessly that you don’t realize how much information you are getting. Another thing that keeps the book alive is the sources that the author chose and the personal way she followed them. She traveled to meet people at the leading edges of all each of the topics she covered. Then she followed them into the field. She never mentioned how difficult this might have been, but I had to wonder. As just one example, she spent days backpacking through high elevation experimental plots in the Amazon. The researchers shared cocoa leaves with her to make this easier. She describes sliding from the icy ground into a cave through a narrow gap and landing in a soft pile of dead bats. Ocean acidification is a terrible problem, but actually pretty boring. Elizabeth Kolbert went to an area where the ocean is naturally acidified by carbon dioxide vents and dove with scientists studying the numbers and types of organisms in the gradient leading away from the vents. Then she went to two small remote islands to follow research on coral reefs. One of the islands, One Tree, was 750 feet long and 500 feet wide, so it is quite an extremely small island. In addition to the research being done there, Kolbert shared this experience from One Tree:
In between trips out over the reef to collect samples, the scientists at One Tree did a lot of snorkeling. The group’s preferred spot was about a half a mile offshore, on the opposite side of the island from DK-13, and getting there meant cajoling Graham, the station manager, into taking the boat, something that he did only with reluctance and a fair amount of grumbling.
Some of the scientists, who had dived all over—in the Philippines, in Indonesia, in the Caribbean, and in the South Pacific—told me that he snorkeling at One Tree was about as good as it gets. I found this easy to believe. The first time I jumped off the boat and looked down at the swirl of life beneath me, it felt unreal, as if I’d swum into the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau. Schools of small fish were followed by schools of larger fish, which were followed by sharks. Huge rays glided by, trailed by turtles the size of bathtubs. I tried to keep a mental list of what I’d seen, but it was like trying to catalog a dream.
The examples she gives of living creatures and extinction events from the past are so clear and memorable that this book is the best tool I have seen yet for fixing geologic ages in memory. But that is not the point of the book. Neither is, exactly, getting up to date on ecological issues such as the chytrid fungus that is causing wide-scale amphibian extinction or the white-nose fungus that is wiping out bat populations in the U.S. However, this book is the best comprehensive source of information on how amphibians are faring and it does a better job of making the problem with bats real than anything else I have seen. The immense work that must have gone into planning and researching this book makes it fascinating and effortless to read, something really surprising for this topic. ...more

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