内容

目次

Part 1 Almost all species are extinct: is extinction important? badgenes or bad luck? the nature of extinction; who studies extinction? aword about the word; species defined; the purpose of extinction, ifany. Part 2 A brief history of life: origin of life; complex life; thequality of the fossil record; 600 million years of fussing; a stockmarket analogy; trilobite eyes; tropical reefs; flying reptiles; humanevolution; living fossils. Part 3 Gambler's ruin and other problems:gambling; concepts of randomness; gambling for survival; differingextinction and speciation rates; skewed histograms; other models; anote on extinction of surnames. Part 4 Mass extinctions: the K-T massextinction; measuring extinction; a note on killing; duration of massextinctions; do mass extinctions differ from background; the killcurve. Part 5 Selectivity of extinction: Ice Age Blitzkrieg;selectivity of the Blitzkrieg; body size and the K-T extinction; otherexamples of bias; other examples of selectivity; the Trilobites' badgenes; some implications; summary. Part 6 The search for causes: therarity of extinction; just so stories; beware of anthropomorphism!; thekill curve revisited. Part 7 Biological causes of extinction: arespecies and ecosystems fragile? the case of the heath hen; importanceof the first strike; problems of small populations; competition;species-area effects; species-area and past extinctions; the greatAmerican interchange; the history of tropical rain forests. Part 8Physical causes of extinction: traditional favourites; sea level andclimate; species-area effects; testing sea level and climate; thePleistocene experience; exotic physical causes; unheard-of volcanism;cosmic causes. Part 9 Rocks falling out of the sky: cratering rates;destructive power; Alvarez and the K-T extinction; periodicity ofextinction and nemesis. Part 10 Could all the extinctions be caused bymeteorite impact? plausibility arguments; arguments from observation;extinctions are linked to craters; extinctions are not linked tocraters; assessment. Part 11 Perspectives on extinction: how to becomeextinct; wanton extinction; the role of extinction in evolution; badgenes or bad luck?; a note on extinctions today. Epilogue: did wechoose a safe planet?.