Abstract
Mass extinctions are real events that have had a profound effect on the course of biological evolutionary history. In retrospect, it is astonishing that it took a full century and a half since the publication of Cuvier’s (1812) monograph detailing successive episodes of extinction and consequent biotic rebounds—rebounds that modern science attributes to evolution, but that Cuvier understood as separate acts of Creation—for the importance of extinction to come to the fore.
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Eldredge, N. (1999). Cretaceous Meteor Showers, the Human Ecological “Niche,” and the Sixth Extinction. In: MacPhee, R.D.E. (eds) Extinctions in Near Time. Advances in Vertebrate Paleobiology, vol 2. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-5202-1_1
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