Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago » (New Edition)

Douglas H. Erwin is senior scientist and curator in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute. He began researching the end-Permian mass extinction in the early 1980s and has traveled many times to China, South Africa, and Europe seeking its causes.

"Douglas Erwin blends careful scholarship and graceful prose in this authoritative elucidation of Earth's greatest mass extinction. Although framed in terms of hypotheses and their tests, Erwin's story unfolds as a gripping who-done-it for the ages."—Andrew H. Knoll, Harvard University, author of Life on a Young Planet

"Douglas Erwin is the world's leading expert on the end-Permian extinction. This book will be the standard reference on this crucial event in the history of life. It is a wonderful example of science in action."—Richard Bambach, Virginia Tech

"This book provides an up-to-date review and critical appraisal of all we know about the end-Permian mass extinction, a subject that has drawn much popular attention. Complementing its solid scholarship, its friendly style enables educated general readers to get to grips with all the current debates."—Paul Wignall, University of Leeds, author of Mass Extinctions and Their Aftermaths

"In conversational prose, Douglas Erwin provides a useful roadmap to a complex scientific subject—an up-to-date treatment of the end-Permian extinction."—Michael J. Foote, University of Chicago

The Washington Post - Joshua Foer

Douglas H. Erwin, a Smithsonian paleobiologist and one of the leading experts on the Permian extinction, has meticulously sifted through the evidence for each of these hypothetical culprits. His accessible new book, Extinction -- written, it seems, both to persuade his colleagues and to educate a lay audience -- is told from the perspective of a forensic scientist trying to piece together a quarter-billion-year-old crime scene from an impossibly scant body of clues. It unfolds as a sort of geological mystery story.