The Great Extinctions: What Causes Them and How They Shape Life

For over a century, geologists have tried to identify and understand the processes responsible for the complex history of species extinction. This search has become even more important over the last decade as human populations and human technology may now rival sea-level change, volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts as an extinction mechanism.

The Great Extinctions explores the history of that search, its subjects, its controversies, its current conclusions and their meaning for our efforts to preserve the Earth's biodiversity. It explains what extinction is, what causes it and whether it can be prevented. Examining extinction over geological time,The Great Extinctions compares past geological extinction events and uses them to predict what it is likely to happen in the future.