The End of Evolution

The first great mass extinction 250 million years ago, called the First Event, destroyed 90% of life on earth. The Second Event, 65 million years ago, wiped out 50% of all species, including the dinosaurs. Ward ( In Search of Nautilus ) asserts that the Third Event is well underway, having begun at the end of the last Ice Age. And the culprit this time is no asteroid but Homo sapiens. Seeking clues to the past events, Ward takes us to the Karoo Desert in South Africa, where the best record of land-animal evolution has been preserved. He inspects outcrops in the Caucasus Mountains of Soviet Georgia and searches for dinosaur fossils in Montana. Ward chronicles historic extinctions in Hawaii, the Philippine Sea, the Columbia River and Madagascar, and notes recent paleontological discoveries in China. This remarkably lucid presentation of a complex subject is reminiscent of Stephen Jay Gould's books. Illustrations. (June)