About the Author

Sadiah Qureshi is a writer and historian of science, race and empire. Currently a Chair of Modern British History at the University of Manchester, she has written for the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement and New Statesman. She cannot bear the thought of living in a world without birdsong, trees or tigers.

Sadiah Qureshi

VANISHED

An Unnatural History of Extinction

DEDICATION

امی جی اور ابو جی میری ہر خواہش آپ کی دعاؤں کی وجہ سے قبول ہوئ ہے۔

باجی سعدیہ آپ کا نام میری زندگی کی برکت ہے۔ میں دعا کرتی ہوں ہم ایک دن ملیں گے۔

Reader, let us create worthwhile futures.

Amid vanishing possibilities, we can still choose redress, reciprocity, and renewal.

List of Illustrations

Prologue The head of a dodo. Coloured stipple engraving. Wellcome Collection.

1.1 Jardin des plantes. Wellcome Collection.

1.2 Megatherium, Natural History Museum, London. © Sadiah Qureshi.

1.3 Skeleton of the Missouri Leviathan, or American Incognitum. Watercolour, possibly by G. Tytler, c. 1842. Wellcome Collection.

1.4 Scholars attending a lecture by Buckland in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Coloured lithograph printed by C. Hullmandel after N. Whittock. Wellcome Collection.

1.5 Mary Anning’s autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus, from Mary Anning; sketch of plesiosaurus. Wellcome Collection.

1.6 Megalosaurus teeth and lower jaw, by M. Moreland, c. 1822. Lithograph, c. 1822. Wellcome Collection.

1.7 Animals and plants of Dorset in the Liassic period. Lithograph by G. Scharf after H. T. de la Bèche. Wellcome Collection.

1.8 Richard Owen standing next to the skeleton of the Dinornis maximus (the extinct New Zealand moa). Halftone after J. Smit after a photograph, c. 1877. Wellcome Collection.

1.9 The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, print by G. Baxter, c. 1864. Wellcome Collection.

2.1 Shanawdithit, c. 1820s. From J. P. Howley, The Beothucks, or Red Indians, the Aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland (1915).

2.2 Santu Toney, with her son Joe Toney. From F. G. Speck, Beothuk and Micmac (1922).

3.1 George Catlin, Picturesque Bluffs above Prairie du Chien (1835–6). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs Joseph Harrison, Jr.

3.2 Thomas Moran, Yellowstone Lake, c. 1875. © Library of Congress.

4.1 Handbill for the exhibition of the ‘Human Fossil’. © Geological Society of London, LDGSL/547: image number 10-03. Reproduced by permission of the Geological Society of London.

4.2 The Anthropomorpha. From Caroli Linné, Amoenitates academicae (1787). Wellcome Collection.

4.3 A human hierarchy constructed using the facial angle from ape to Apollo. From Petrus Camper, Dissertation physique (1791). Wellcome Collection.

4.4 Huxley’s drawing of the Neanderthal skull cast. From T. H. Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature (1863). © Sadiah Qureshi.

5.1 Drawings of Australian fauna and flora from the voyages of Joseph Banks. Australia: above, a kangaroo; below, a common ringtail possum. Etching by C. Grignion, c. 1788. Wellcome Collection.

5.2 A map of Australia highlighting the places where Daisy Bates conducted her research. From D. Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines, 2nd Australian ed. (1947).

5.3 Darian D. Smith. ‘Mrs Daisy Bates at her desk in Adelaide, South Australia’ (1941). © State Library of Victoria, public domain.

5.4 Glass phial labelled as containing the ‘Hair of Extinct Tasmanian Aboriginal’. Wellcome Collection.

6.1 Steller’s sea cow, from Hutchinson’s Extinct Monsters (1893).

6.2 A thylacine, probably in Hobart Zoo (1930). Item number PH30/1/5846. © Libraries of Tasmania, public domain.

7.1 A fossil of the Devonian trilobite Phacops rana. © Wikimedia Commons.

9.1 Martha’s afterlife as a museum specimen. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95, Box 44, Folder 04, Image No. SIA_000095_B44_F04_013.

10.1 The Natural History Museum, South Kensington: plan, above, and the street elevation, below. Photo-lithograph after M. B. Adams, 1879, after A. Waterhouse. Wellcome Collection.

10.2 Hope, the blue whale, Natural History Museum, London. © Sadiah Qureshi.

10.3 Koch’s Missouri Leviathan, or the American mastodon, Natural History Museum, London. © Sadiah Qureshi.

11.1 The spotted green pigeon, from John Latham, A General History of Birds, vol. 3 (1823).

11.2 Labels tracing the collection and classification of the Liverpool pigeon, World Museum, Liverpool. © Sadiah Qureshi.

11.3 An endangered Sumatran tiger in the hall of extinct species, Museum of Natural History, Paris. © Sadiah Qureshi.

Prologue
Extinction’s Pasts

The Mascarene Islands nestle together in the Indian Ocean. More than four hundred kilometres off the coast of Mozambique sits Madagascar, east of which the trio of Réunion, Mauritius, and Rodrigues islands rise above an underwater plateau of volcanoes whose eruptions 65 million years ago formed India’s Deccan traps. Mauritius emerged from the sea between 8 and 10 million years ago, while Rodrigues and Réunion are only about 2 million years old. The islands are known for their azure waters, sunny beaches, and unique wildlife.

Millions of years ago, a pigeon spent time hopping between the Mascarene Islands. The bird’s descendants took to the ground, lost the ability to fly, developed large beaks to forage for fruit, grew so tall and heavy they took to nesting on the ground, and diverged enough to become unique to their island homes: the Mauritian Dodo and the Rodrigues Solitaire. These, and many other unique beings, lived without human presence for millions of years. Arab traders knew of Mauritius for at least five centuries, but never settled there. The Portuguese arrived in 1507, while the Dutch used the island as a pit-stop on their oceanic voyages from 1598. They found an island with no mammals and introduced prolifically fertile cats, dogs, monkeys, goats, swine, and rats. Isolation had made the dodo so unafraid of outsiders that sailors took the bird by hand to make easy meals and, occasionally, ship the living curiosity to Europe, Japan, and India. Laying only one egg a year, dodos bred slowly and their population plummeted in the maws of ravenous intruders. A shipwrecked sailor made the last confirmed sighting of a dodo in 1662, and the bird was soon extinct, probably by the 1690s.1 The solitaire survived a while longer, but was also extinct by the 1770s, and possibly earlier.2

Memories of the ‘strange fowle’ faded so fast that the dodo was dismissed as grotesque imagination until nineteenth-century naturalists meticulously documented the bird’s presence in travelogues, museum drawers, and art collections. They concluded that dodos were ‘almost contemporaries of our great-grandfathers’, and the ‘first clearly attested’ extinction ‘through human agency’.3 While caches of dodo bones first found in 1865 yielded enough material for the construction of composite skeletons, no complete specimen exists. The only known soft tissue is a mummified head of uncertain provenance, but probably from a bird once exhibited in London.

Around 1638, the politician and writer Sir Hamon L’Estrange observed:

… as I walked London streets, I saw the picture of a strange fowle hung out upon a clothe and myselfe with one or two more in company went in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and was a great fowle somewhat bigger than the largest Turkey cock, and so legged and footed, but stouter and thicker and of more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of a young cock fesan, and on the back of a dunn or dearc colour. The keeper called it a Dodo …4

L’Estrange’s brief note is the only known record of a living dodo in London. After the bird died, possibly by a gunshot to the back of the head, its skin was preserved and probably sold to a father and son named John Tradescant. A pair of gardeners with a penchant for collecting, their cabinet of curiosities was open to anyone with a sixpence to spare in London and known as the Tradescant Ark. After the elder’s death, the son sold the treasures to the keen collector Elias Ashmole in 1659. He later offered his ‘rarities’, including the Ark, to the University of Oxford on condition that they were housed in a purpose-built museum. The Ashmolean Museum opened in 1683, possibly as the last few dodos eked out their existence in Mauritius. The skin of the Tradescants’ dodo suffered damage, probably from handling and gnawing critters, and by the mid-eighteenth century the skin was no longer whole.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the dodo’s remnants and other natural history specimens were moved yet again to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.5 Founded in 1850, the museum provided a focal point for scholars of the natural sciences in a university then dominated by theology, philosophy, and classics. Fossils, stuffed skins, and mined minerals were showcased in an extraordinary building that opened in 1860. The museum tower houses a colony of swifts whose joyful screeches have marked the summer months for decades. Inside, the light-filled galleries teem with glass cabinets, minerals, and skeletons of extinct and living beasts. One cabinet features a lifesize model of the dodo, while the giftshop features numerous dodo-themed keepsakes. The Oxford Dodo lies away from the public’s gaze in a secret location. Only accessible by appointment, the Oxford Dodo is an assortment of precious remains: a skull partially sheathed in a mummified skin, an incomplete eye, a foot, a femur, and a single feather so minuscule it resembles an iridescent needle. I was familiar with the specimen from nineteenth-century drawings in which the light touch of artistic hands made the bird look asleep, but even modern photographs did not prepare me for the shock of encountering its desiccated and brittle skin and frail bill in person. As a historian of science, race, and empire, I have encountered life’s relics in museums for as long as I can remember, but seeing one of the world’s most distinctive ways of being, and famous victims of extinction, reduced to such grotesque fragility made me gasp and well up with tears.

1. The head of the Oxford dodo.

Extinction extinguishes ways of being: distinct lifeways that might exist for untold millennia, even millions of years, before vanishing. Ways of being are a coalescence of possibilities, a quickening of leaf, wing, scale, and bone into lives we call ‘trees’, ‘bees’, ‘sharks’, ‘tigers’, or ‘human’.6 Each one is perpetuated by living, reproducing, and growing in communities over innumerable generations. Every way of being is connected to other lives through countless functions, whether as predator, prey, parent, or partner, that create significant relationships between lifeways. Sometimes descendants depart incrementally from ancestral ways, giving rise to new forms, until they appear distinctive enough for us to notice the difference, and perhaps even to designate them a species. The multiple technical definitions used to describe species are a human invention – a way of categorizing life on earth. We usually discuss extinction as the loss of species, but this often obscures how it robs the world of distinctive existences, many far older than any nation, humanity, and even earth’s continents.

We will never know how many ways of being once thrived on earth, but you are a survivor of many episodes of catastrophic dying. Geologists currently date the earth to around 4.6 billion years old. The oldest known fossils are dated to about 3.5 billion years old, but carbon residues probably produced by living forms are known from as early as 4.1 billion years ago.7 Since then innumerable ways of being have found ways to live and flourish, from bacteria living in extreme temperatures in ocean depths, to the birds, plants, and fungi we see and hear around us every day. Earth’s past is punctuated by numerous extinctions, meaning all life on earth is descended from just the tenth of species that geologists regard as the survivors of past calamities. A complete catalogue of life is impossible, but fossils provide reliable snapshots of life’s diversity and many ways of being before we were ever conscious of their existence. By 2023, biologists had distinguished 2.1 million living species and 250,000 fossil species, but their best estimates for the total number of living species was 8.75 million (including 7.8 million animals, 298,000 plants, and 611,000 fungi), with some suspecting up to 10 million species may once have existed.8 While birds and mammals are comprehensively named and known, other kinds, such as invertebrates, insects, fungi, or microbes, remain relatively neglected mysteries.

Even if all living species were named, from the blue whale to every microbe, they are a fraction of the once living. Many lives were rendered unknowable in ‘dark extinctions’: an evocative phrase describing the loss of species before humans were aware of their existence, whether in ancient lost worlds or more recently. In 2021 the scientists Mannfred Boehm and Quentin Cronk used rates of species discovery and known species extinctions to estimate ‘the extinction of undescribed species’. They subdivided recent human history into a ‘pre-taxonomic period’ stretching from 1500 to 1800, essentially including a substantial period of European colonization and collection of species, and a ‘taxonomic period’ from 1800 to the present day to adjust for variations in the quality of data. They estimated that at least fifty-six unknown species were lost after 1800, whereas another 180 were lost in the previous three centuries. These ‘dark extinctions’ were in addition to the 178 documented bird extinctions after 1500, and many were caused by humans. Occasionally, those species will appear in the fossil record, in museum drawers, or even found alive, while others leave no trace to be known or named.9

Extinction is an important marker of humanity’s devastating environmental impact in recent centuries. Fears that we have instigated the sixth mass extinction by overpopulating the earth with our own kind, propagating invasive species, causing pollution, unsustainably harvesting natural resources, causing climate change through destroying natural habitats, and emitting greenhouse gases are familiar to us by now. Responses to earth’s plight and the prospect of human extinction range from outright denial and refusal to admit culpability, to sanguine expectations that new technologies will save us, or panic at the prospect of approaching self-annihilation through nuclear war or ecocide. Many fight extinction through conservation or trying to resurrect lost species through ‘de-extinction’. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT, pronounced ‘vehement’) encourages us to hasten our demise and trigger earth’s recovery by choosing not to have children.10 It is no wonder that so many people feel compelled to take advantage of the last chance to see certain species such as the northern white rhino, or create archives of the dying while trying to make meaning out of loss, grief, panic, and hope. As each way of being slips away from us, we are increasingly likely to be aware of the disappearance as conservation biologists list species in peril and media outlets publish annual updates of the previous year’s extinctions.11 In 2023, for example, the Campo Grande Treefrog of Brazil, Pointed Plateau Loach fish of China, and Java Stingaree stingray of Indonesia were all declared extinct.

Whether playing with toy dinosaurs or visiting natural history museums, even young children are familiar with extinction; encountering such loss is often emotional and upsetting, and remains so as we learn of ever more species doomed to the same fate. Many of us remember the first time we realized a wondrous creature we admired was no longer living, and often that moment involved learning of the dinosaurs’ fate. Encountering extinction primarily through prehistoric loss can trick us into imagining extinction as a primarily biological process or catastrophic loss caused by natural disasters. While understandable, this underplays how we contribute to and make sense of extinction. No other species conceives of itself as in danger of extinction. No other species attempts to prevent the extinction of other ways of being, counts them as they disappear, tries to revive those already lost, or frets over its culpability. No other species produces elegiac artforms, or holds ceremonies such as the Remembrance Day for Lost Species, established in 2011 and held every 30 November, to mourn such loss.12

How did we come to think of ourselves as survivors in a world where species can vanish for ever, or as capable of plunging our planet into a sixth mass extinction? And how has this understanding of extinction shaped how we imagine our histories, our place in the world, and role in shaping our planet? By tracing how we have made meaning from, and decisions about, extinction, Vanished suggests that histories of extinction are a valuable intellectual and ethical endeavour that allow us to understand the entangled roots of extinction, empire, and race in the making of the modern world. Present-day conversations about extinction are dominated by discussions of species loss, but this is a relatively new historical turn. The act of extinguishing was often called ‘extinction’ in the sixteenth century. From emotional lives to fiery embers, extinction denoted deliberately snuffing out passions or brightness. Likewise, from wills to family trees, extinction might refer to a lineage dying out, perhaps coupled with the loss of a family surname or hereditary title. We might still come across this legacy with someone fretting over carrying on the family name, particularly by those with rare surnames. Occasionally, lists of first names on the verge of extinction circulate on social media or the popular press as parents switch to more fashionable alternatives.13 Extinction might describe the settling of a debt or score, or an expunging of a moral and political obligation to make good on promises. From the 1700s onwards, and particularly in the nineteenth century, as calls for the abolition of enslavement grew, commentators were increasingly likely to call for the extinction of both the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and enslavement itself.14 Those extinctions were lamentably slow and still demand true reckoning and reparation.15

In late eighteenth-century Europe and America, extinction slowly came to mean species loss. Naturalists and theologians of the period usually regarded species as stable, unchanging, natural kinds created by God. The notion they might change, let alone develop into a new species or vanish for ever, was considered implausible at best, and even ungodly or atheistic. When species were believed lost, such as the dodo, their passing was usually attributed to human exploitation leading to ‘extirpation’, ‘eradication’, or ‘extermination’. Over the nineteenth century, naturalists, theologians, philosophers, and the broader public shifted from primarily blaming humanity to theorizing extinction as a process of routine, recurrent, and ubiquitous loss inherent in the natural world. Extinction shifted from being a theologically perilous idea to a natural law ostensibly ordained by God. By the later nineteenth century, naturalists debating the nature of natural extinction recognized that humanity was also causing profoundly unnatural extinctions of once prolific species, such as the great auk or passenger pigeon, creating new fears about vanishing species. By the mid-twentieth century, biologists were increasingly concerned with counting and categorizing the degrees of threat faced by species on the brink of disappearing. As the environmental movement flourished during the Cold War, geologists suggested life on earth had experienced five catastrophic mass extinctions that annihilated many groups, including the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. By the 1980s, a new generation of conservation biologists reframed species loss as an urgent problem of diminishing diversity of life on earth. Once concerns about biodiversity and the planet’s future were intertwined, they helped substantiate terrifying claims that humanity’s carelessness meant everyone in the present was living through earth’s sixth mass extinction.16 Tracing the history of extinction as species loss is important, but we should not allow this to overshadow other subjects.

Many white naturalists and colonists in the nineteenth century argued that colonized peoples were on the verge of extinction. Effectively, these writers conflated natural biological extinction with unnatural imperial extermination to suggest that colonized peoples across the world could not, and would not, survive the expansion of European settler colonies. The legacies of those claims are still with us as many colonized peoples are said to be extinct: the Beothuk in Newfoundland, numerous Native nations in North America, and the Aboriginal Tasmanians are among the most frequently named in histories of European imperialism and genocide studies. Yet, colonized peoples and species are rarely discussed together as the subjects of scientific debates about extinction, despite the fact that nineteenth-century writers often conflated extermination with extinction. In some ways this is understandable because it risks implying that colonized peoples are not fully human or are even bestial, which would perpetuate profoundly racist stereotypes that must not be given any credence. However, by treating human extermination and animal extinction as separate historical developments, historians have overlooked an exceptionally important shift. This book argues that the shifting epistemic status of animal extinction helped frame the rapid and violent dispossession of colonized peoples. This cannot be fully appreciated without writing histories about the entangled fates of humans, animals, and plants as new ideas about species loss emerged.

We craft many narratives to make sense of, and wrest meaning from, extinction, yet far too many histories remain untold, forgotten, or erased. Epics in which heroic scientists discover lost species and formulate new theories about their extinction are the most obvious, and common, ways of tracing scientific debates about extinction. In these tales, heroes rooted in entrenched privilege, whether in terms of class, wealth, gender, or race, prevail against the odds to introduce new ideas and change how we view the world. Unfortunately, sweeping accounts of ideas about extinction often fail to recognize women and colonized peoples as producers of meaningful knowledge about the world. In these surveys, marginalized peoples are merely onlookers as history unfolds around them, even as it envelops and destroys their world. This suggests a rather narrow understanding of extinction as a biological process discovered almost exclusively by male scientists, and the nature of history as tales of individualized heroic discovery. Alternatively, we might encounter tragedies in which we lose Edenic bliss and bounty through the sin of earthly over-exploitation that is not slowing even in the gaping maw of an apocalyptic future. Rarity and pre-emptive mourning can also prompt quixotic pilgrimages by intrepid explorers seeking to see the last of their kind. Some extinctions are rendered into exquisite miniatures of endlings, or the last living member of their species, creating a canonical roll-call including Martha the Passenger Pigeon (1914) and Benjamin the Thylacine (1936).17 While captivating, these perspectives can often lead to histories of climate change, conservation movements, and species loss privileging iconic animals or spectacular wildernesses. However, we need much richer accounts of how ideas of extinction developed, and not just as stories about species and sites we find enchanting, from pandas to national parks.

Vanished traces how naturalists reimagined extinction from acts of wanton human destruction into a scientific idea born of revolution, and the chilling choices facing us today. By exploring concepts of human and ecological loss together, the book provides a broad exploration of how we understand, and make meaning from, extinction. Instead of a sweeping epic, this book is divided into two parts, with each chapter offering kaleidoscopic glimpses of how extinction has been imagined through examples of animals, peoples, and plants over the past three centuries. Part One addresses the challenge of ‘Peopling Extinction’. We begin by tracing how eighteenth-century naturalists changed their minds about the nature of extinction. Once regarded as a theologically suspect idea, modern naturalists established the notion of extinction as a providential natural law that governed all life. We continue by exploring how ideas about animal extinction were extended to colonized peoples – from North America to Australia and ancient humans – during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only by peopling histories of extinction can we fully appreciate how the political processes of colonization, conquest, and extermination were routinely conflated, and recast, as the natural extinction of ‘doomed races’. As such, Part One reveals the deep-rooted associations between extinction, empire, genocide, dispossession, and conservation strategies such as the establishment of natural parks, or present-day campaigns for Indigenous land rights. Readers are warned that retracing such connections includes accounts of horrific violence and violations targeting Indigenous peoples, and uses names of the deceased. Part Two explores the making of ‘Empire’s Endlings’. Between the later nineteenth century and mid-twentieth century, concerns about ‘dying races’ were joined, and ultimately eclipsed, by concerns about vanishing species. When extinction was first accepted as a pervasive feature of life on earth in the nineteenth century, naturalists tended to think about species loss as historical. When species were eradicated in the modern world, from Steller’s sea cow to the great auk, naturalists reimagined extinction as a process creating, and threatening, vanishing species. Part Two traces how ideas about endangerment led to the founding of new international networks of wildlife protection to conserve, and monitor, threatened species, just as ideas about catastrophic mass extinction were established during the Cold War. We end by exploring possibilities for renewal, redress, and restitution, from the chance finding of a tree believed to be extinct, to the challenges of de-extinction, and, finally, the ability of living beings, such as whales, to recover from the brink of annihilation – leaving us with glimmers of hope.

By weaving together histories of science, race, and empire, Vanished traces the nature of extinction as a scientific idea, imperial legacy, and political choice. By providing a more compelling account of these past entanglements, this book seeks more worthwhile futures for life on earth. Some ways of being died out long before we existed, but the way we have imagined prehistoric and more recent losses is an unnatural history of our own making that requires fresh historical scrutiny. Extinction may be natural, but it is also a human idea that we use to make meaning from loss in a world that we might be on the verge of destroying – or saving. The choice is ours.

Part One

PEOPLING EXTINCTION

1.

Exit, Pursued by a Mastodon

In spring 1767 the physician William Hunter took a break from ministering to Queen Charlotte, whose husband was George III, and visited the Tower of London. Although the site hosted a menagerie and temporary exhibitions, he travelled there to see the remains of the dead. The Tower had recently acquired the bones, tusks, and teeth of a mysterious beast from North America. Excavators initially believed the fragments were curious minerals moulded in the floodplains, valleys, and flats of a salt lick nicknamed Big Bone Lick, in what is now the state of Kentucky. Over many centuries, animals had visited the site to lick salt, often churning up large bones known to the Shawnee as the father of cattle.1 As larger fragments accumulated from 1739 onwards, European colonists also recognized them as animal remains, but probably those of a gargantuan monster. Naturalists and fossil connoisseurs disputed the nature of the beast, quickly named the ‘Ohio Animal’ after the Ohio river. Amid the excitement about a potentially unknown creature, disputes raged about the meaning of the remains. The tusks convinced many it must be elephantine. Imagine an American elephant when only African and Asian varieties were known! Yet, how did the beast reach the Americas? Where had it lived? And, more controversially, was the beast lost for ever?

His curiosity piqued, Dr Hunter met a curator who told him about the fossils’ provenance. When Hunter requested an opportunity to examine the relics, the curator obliged by sending him a tusk and teeth for his extended perusal. After an extensive examination, Hunter sought a second opinion. A kinship with elephants seemed obvious at first sight, but he felt the bones were so large that they must have belonged to a more cumbersome creature. He considered that they might be from a mammoth whose frozen remains were regularly dug up in the Siberian tundra, but this possibility seemed far-fetched as Hunter noted many ‘modern philosophers have held the mammoth to be as fabulous as the Centaur’.2 Given the mystery over whether mammoths even existed, William Hunter showed the bones to his younger brother John Hunter, also a medical man whose anatomical collections eventually formed the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, London. William tracked down further specimens by visiting collectors with a penchant for the curious, and compared fragments of the Ohio Animal to the teeth and jaws of ‘elephants, and hippopotami, and other large animals’. He grew convinced the beast was a gargantuan and carnivorous ‘animal incognitum ’.3

William Hunter’s interest was not limited to naming the unknown. He speculated that the fossils might yield clues to the ‘astonishing change’ that must have swept the globe causing ‘the highest mountains’ to have ‘lain for many ages in the bottom of the sea’ while colder climates must have been home to animals now ‘confined to the warm climates’.4 His excited imagination suggests the mystery of the beast’s origins and whereabouts was never merely an issue of classification, but the tantalizing prospect of addressing much bolder questions about earth’s past travails. William’s researches led him to conclude that the beast was a Siberian mammoth. He presented a paper to the Royal Society the following year where he informed his peers ‘we may as philosophers regret it’ but ‘as men we cannot but thank Heaven that its whole generation is probably extinct’.5 Hunter’s gratitude might seem as odd as his conclusion seems obvious to us. However, both reveal a great deal about the history of ideas about extinction. Mourning loss was not inevitable, while even the most cautious claims about annihilation were bold interventions in broader discussions about the very possibility, and nature, of extinction that remained deeply controversial for decades.

The mystery criss-crossed the Atlantic. In Paris the greatest naturalist of the age, Comte de Buffon, insisted the beast was a type of elephant, but one probably lost for ever. Founding Father, enslaver, and future President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson speculated in his book Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) that the incognitum might live in lands untrodden by colonists. A keen naturalist and fossil collector, he started writing his notes in 1781 to contradict European claims that America’s fauna was weak and inferior to that of the old world. He observed ‘it is well known that on the Ohio, and in many parts of America further north, tusks, grinders, and skeletons of unparalleled magnitude are found in great numbers, some lying on the surface of the earth, and some a little below it’. Drawing on Native knowledge, he insisted that the bones belonged to an animal ‘still existing in the northern parts of their country’.6 As colonization continued westwards from the first thirteen colonies on the east coast of North America, much of the continent remained well known only by Native nations. Jefferson believed it eminently possible that they knew of a living incognitum in their lands. His speculation indicates a broader reluctance to assume apparently absent creatures were extinct, and the difficulty of knowing if they were, even when relying on established Native knowledge stretching further back than any European presence on the continent.

Naturalists knew that declaring the beast extinct required judicious caution. In this period, species were usually regarded as stable, unchanging, natural kinds created by God. The notion they might change, let alone develop or vanish, was considered implausible and possibly even atheistic. Lost natural kinds were Creation’s lacunae. If a species was suspiciously absent, three possibilities appeared logically possible in the eighteenth century. First, the species might have migrated and simply remained unknown in new territory. Second, the species might have developed into another, or evolved in modern terms, and survived in an apparently unconnected form, but this was difficult to defend against a broader consensus about the fixity of species. Third, the species had vanished. Extinction was a known possibility, but generally attributed to wanton human destruction. From the three options of migration, development, and extinction, naturalists usually favoured migration. Accepting extinction as a process inherent to life on earth contradicted the belief that God’s Creation always exhibited its full range of perfection and diversity, or the principle of plenitude. Regarding natural imperfection as an inherent feature posed significant scientific and theological dangers.7 William Hunter’s cautious description of the incognitum as ‘probably extinct’ was an important recognition of the claim’s gravity. Soon, a political revolution transformed the reticence of naturalists.

Eden’s Relics

Parisian revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, a medieval fortress holding just seven quickly liberated prisoners, on 14 July 1789. The overthrow of the old regime ushered in political upheavals credited with the birth of the modern nation and modern sciences. The French Revolution abolished many forms of feudal and aristocratic privilege in an effort to replace the ancient ties of royal subjecthood with the promise of equal citizenship in a new nation.8 French science already thrived in institutions such as the Académie Royale des Sciences and the Paris Observatory, both founded in the 1660s, but revolution dismantled older hierarchies to found new educational and vocational structures. The royal academies were abolished in 1793 and replaced by the Institut National, dedicated to the three classes of science, moral and political sciences, and literature and art, in 1795. The scientific class was renamed the Académie des Sciences in 1815. The foundation of specialized elite training schools later known as the grandes écoles, most notably the École Polytechnique founded in 1794, and new positions in reformed and revolutionary institutions, meant revolutionary upheaval had created fortunate new prospects for ambitious men.9

Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of France in 1799, a decade after revolution erupted, moved into the Tuileries Palace in 1800, and crowned himself Emperor in December 1804. Napoleon’s early ambitions were evident in his campaign to colonize the ancient kingdom of Egypt; while unsuccessful, he and his men returned with an extraordinary assortment of manuscripts and artefacts collected between 1798 and 1801. Among these, the Rosetta Stone helped scholars decode Egyptian hieroglyphs and, after its seizure by the British, was displayed in the British Museum where it remains. Once home, Napoleon refashioned Paris into an imperial capital with the classical grandeur of ancient Athens or Rome. He commissioned monuments commemorating his military victories, including the Vendôme Column and the Arc de Triomphe. Napoleon’s acquisitiveness included the territories of his foes and collections of European elites. Waging near ceaseless war across Europe, he extended France’s imperial reach as far as the Kingdom of Prussia along the northern European coast, the Confederacy of the Rhine in central Europe, and into central Italy bordering the Kingdom of Naples. After Napoleon’s defeat at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, his success faded and he left France with less territory than when he seized power. However, his exploits permanently swelled with their seized loot the already vast holdings of Parisian museums.10

As revolution gripped Paris, the future of the royal garden, the Jardin du Roi, seemed as inauspicious as that of other institutions of the old order. Founded by the royal decree of Louis XIII in May 1635, the royal garden was originally planted as a medicinal herb garden. The site eventually housed the King’s personal museum (Cabinet du Roi) and menagerie from 1794.11 In the eighteenth century, the royal garden’s intellectual and social fortunes were transformed under the leadership of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. Severing the garden from its medicinal roots, he created an important site for botanical research, such as acclimatizing foreign plants sent back to Paris as seeds or living flora by a global network of collectors and correspondents. His stellar reputation rested upon his monumental and encyclopaedic Natural History (Histoire Naturelle). Lauded as a masterpiece across Europe, this astonishing work comprised thirty-six volumes published during his lifetime, but ultimately sprawled across forty-four volumes published between 1749 and 1804. The magnum opus was posthumously finished by Buffon’s protégé, the Comte de Lacépède, who was specifically trained for the task by the elderly author.12 Buffon presided over the royal garden between 1739 and his death in 1788, a year before the outbreak of revolutionary violence.

When the royal garden’s naturalists were summoned before the Revolutionary Assembly they pleaded for a chance to reform. Reprieved, they spent an anxious summer developing a proposal to transform themselves from royally patronized subjects to state-employed professors administering an amalgamated royal botanic garden, menagerie and museum of natural history. In June 1793 revolutionaries abolished the royal garden and rebranded the site a botanic garden (Jardin des plantes), while also founding the new Museum of Natural History (Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle) alongside twelve professorships. Within weeks, revolutionaries also established an arts museum (Musée des Arts) as a state-owned art collection at the Louvre Palace, and the botanic garden was opened to the public the following spring. Amid the political fervour, the professors saved their necks by rebranding their expertise in taming nature as perfectly suited to improving a nation sullied by the worst excesses of the ancien régime.13 In a wonderful history of the garden, the historian Emma Spary suggests that the naturalists tried to create an utopia through nurturing the grounds, and by extension, France into a well-ordered, economically productive garden at the heart of the French Empire.14 Originally on the outskirts of the city, but eventually enveloped by urban sprawl, the garden was a prominent site for botanical study, innocent walks, and clandestine trysts (Fig. 1.1). The combined effect of revolutionary violence, imperial ambition, and institutional reforms created unrivalled new opportunities to make natural knowledge while gaining power and prestige during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

1.1 Jardin des plantes.

One of the most important careers forged in the wake of these changes was that of a young man interested in geology, anatomy, and natural history. Georges Cuvier made his name as a comparative anatomist whose research transformed the understanding of earth’s history and the nature of extinction. Born in 1769, he grew up in the French-speaking principality of Montbéliard, then under the control of the Duke of Württemberg. Cuvier’s parents hoped he might become a Lutheran minister, but he proved to be a gifted naturalist, reading his uncle’s copy of Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle at just twelve years old. After completing his education at Caroline University in 1788 he was unable to secure a position in local government. He moved to Normandy and spent six years working as a private tutor while continuing his research in natural history. Cuvier became a French citizen when Montbéliard was subsumed within French territory in 1793. Witnessing revolution erupt from the relative quiet of rural France, he wrote to established professors at the Museum of Natural History seeking new opportunities. He was encouraged to come to Paris by the naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was appointed to a professorship at the museum in his early twenties.

Cuvier ventured to Paris hoping to benefit from the dismantling of old patronage networks just after the worst extremes of the Terror in 1795. Amid political disarray, Cuvier was serendipitously recruited to assist an elderly professor of animal anatomy at the new museum. He lived and worked on-site alongside many museum employees and their families. Although appointed as an anatomist, he broadened his research to comparative anatomy, furthered his reputation through public lectures, and achieved a full professorship within seven years. Cuvier believed species were fixed natural kinds that could not change – or evolve in modern terms. He classified life into four main types, or embranchements, and privileged inward function over outward form when classifying species. In contrast, his colleague Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire theorized that vertebrates were all based on a single archetypical plan, with higher vertebrates, such as mammals, having descended from simpler forms, such as fish, implying some form of developmental change.15 Their disagreement over species fixity created a lasting rivalry.

Even as a junior employee, Cuvier’s ideas about species and research on fossils proved important. In the pre-modern world any oddly shaped stone might be called a fossil, from the Latin fossilis for something dug up from the land. Scholars debated whether fossils were animal, vegetable, or mineral until the sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, fossilized remnants of marine-dwelling ammonites were considered unlike anything known, but many authorities argued they might be found alive in unexplored territories. As larger beasts were dug up from Siberia to the Americas, naturalists cautiously debated their whereabouts. Cuvier investigated the mystery of apparently vanished beings soon after arriving in Paris, beginning with elephants. Most of his peers regarded Asian and African elephants as the same species. Cuvier suspected otherwise. After the French defeat of the Dutch during the revolutionary wars, the Treaty of the Hague in 1795 committed the removal of Dutch heritage collections to Paris, including important natural history specimens such as elephant skulls from Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and from the Cape of Good Hope along the South Atlantic coast of southern Africa. Cuvier compared these skulls to a Siberian mammoth’s jawbone already in Paris. He presented his findings to colleagues and published a paper on the creatures in 1796. Cuvier already thought the trio were different species, but the Dutch collections allowed him to ‘turn the suspicions into certainty’. Cuvier insisted even untrained eyes could discern they were not the same species, but he felt their teeth were especially telling. The Asian elephant’s teeth were ‘festooned with ribbons’, while the African elephant’s teeth were ‘diamond forms’. He argued the differences were greater ‘than the horse from the ass or the goat from the sheep’, making the elephants different species.16

Cuvier turned his attention to the mammoth. He reminded his readers that mammoths were frequently dug up ‘underground in Siberia, Germany, France, Canada, and even Peru’, but rejected every explanation for their continued existence. He was unconvinced by local reports that the mammoth was a subterranean beast that resisted capture. Other fossil megafauna appeared ill suited to present-day climates because they were so unlike surviving fauna. If mammoths were lost, Cuvier wondered, what misfortune caused their demise? He considered the three possibilities that naturalists usually entertained when pondering apparent loss: migration, development, and extinction. He was sceptical that such gargantuan animals might roam the earth undiscovered. They were simply too big to survive unnoticed by people even after migrating to pastures new. He was adamant that the mammoth had not developed into another species because he regarded species as unchanging natural kinds. In guarded words, Cuvier proposed that the collection and consideration of ‘all these facts, consistent among themselves, and not opposed by any report, seem to prove to me the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of catastrophe’.17

A few months later in 1796, Cuvier pondered the strange, and unusually complete, skeleton of the ‘Paraguay animal’. Originally revealed a hundred feet below surface rocks near Buenos Aires, then Spanish South America, in 1789 the remains were shipped to Madrid. Juan-Bautista Bru worked at the Royal Cabinet of Natural History of Madrid as a dissector in the royal laboratory. He mounted the bones to conjure a colossal beast twelve feet long and six feet high with broad shoulders, thick thighs, flat feet, and large pointed claws. Bru commissioned engravings of his magnificent prize specimen for future publication. Those images piqued the curiosity of a visiting French official who acquired unpublished proofs and hastily dispatched copies to Paris in 1796. Cuvier pored over the images of individual bones and the mounted skeleton. Not one bone resembled any living animal of similar size while the skull, shoulder blades, pelvis, and pointed claws were utterly peculiar. Cuvier named the beast the Megatherium americanum in a paper published in 1798 (Fig. 1.2). He conceded the megatherium’s claws and teeth resembled edentates such as sloths, armadillos, pangolins, anteaters and the aardvark, but concluded it must be another long-lost beast, perhaps a gigantic sloth. His paper confidently asserted ‘this animal differs, in the ensemble of its characters, from all known animals’. This fact ‘adds to the numerous facts that tell us that the animals of the ancient world all differ from those we see on earth today’.18

Spurred on by the mammoth and megatherium, Cuvier formulated a new principle of comparative anatomy and made it the cornerstone of his ongoing researches into extinction and earth’s history. He hypothesized that if an anatomist found a sharp-toothed jawbone of a carnivore, he could be assured the animal’s entire skeleton would enable the rapid and successful hunting of prey and a stomach able to digest meat. On this basis, he believed skilled anatomists could reconstruct whole creatures from fragments because skeletal and visceral forms were interdependent and perfectly suited to the conditions of a creature’s existence. Without naming himself and with characteristic bravado, Cuvier elevated his theory about the correlation of parts to the heady levels of disciplinary superiority: ‘comparative anatomy has reached such a point of perfection that, after inspecting a single bone, one can often determine the class, and sometimes even the genus of the animal to which it belonged, and above all if the bone belonged to the head of the limbs’.19 Cuvier’s specific claim was about classifying animals, but his devotees insisted that Cuvier’s principle allowed him, and his disciples, to summon forth an entire animal from a single bone. The exaggerated claim was repeated in the European and American press for more than a century, elevating the originally pragmatic principle into the natural law of the ‘correlation of forms’, assuring his subsequent fame.20

1.2 Megatherium, Natural History Museum, London.

Cuvier’s ideas benefited from the rapid expansion of Paris. As the city’s population swelled and new buildings and monuments mushroomed, miners routinely dug up unknown creatures while quarrying for gypsum to mix plaster of Paris, or Lutetian limestone, the distinctive Paris Stone, to render the outside of buildings. Found embedded deep within the stone layers, mysterious forms were routinely sent to the Museum of Natural History. Cuvier wondered: What were they? Why were they deposited so deeply within the strata? What did they reveal about life on earth? Slowly, he interpreted them as ‘antiquities of nature’, allowing naturalists to disentangle earth’s history as effectively as ‘ordinary antiquities provide for the political and moral history of nations’.21 Increasingly convinced that extinct animals perished in a cataclysm affecting a prehuman world, Cuvier compiled a list of extinct species described by himself or other geologists. The twenty-three species included the North American mastodon that baffled so many, Siberian mammoth, megatherium, long-headed rhinoceros, a large German cave bear, a hyena, giant ‘Elk’ from Irish bogs, fossil turtles, the lizard-like Maastricht crocodile (later named the Mosasaurus), a winged Bavarian reptile (which he later named the ptero-dactyle or ‘wing-fingered animal’), two species of extinct tapir later, and an extinct hippopotamus.22 Many of these species, such as the crocodile or winged dragon, were widely known geological curiosities when Cuvier compiled his list, but he was confident that they were unlike any living species and so helped to reinterpret their significance. Within a decade, Cuvier used his list to predict that extinct beasts might be found beneath the surface of all nations.

Cuvier was especially intrigued by Parisian fossils that resembled living creatures in far-flung places, such as South American tapirs or Australian marsupials. In 1804 the Parisian gypsum yielded a split rock emblazoned with a tiny skeleton including a visible jaw, ribs, spine, pelvis, and legs. Cuvier suspected it was a marsupial. If true, the remarkable specimen conjured a lost world populated with animals unlike anything surviving in France and known only from New Holland (modern Australia). Imagine, tiny marsupials grazing alongside tapirs in what is now Paris, and rhinos where the Louvre now stands! If the fossil was a marsupial, Cuvier predicted two long, flat bones originally supporting a marsupial pouch were hidden in the pelvis. Typically self-assured, he invited colleagues to watch him chip away at the precious fossil. He carved away the gypsum with delicate strokes, brushed off the debris and, to his satiated delight, found the marsupial bones. As he later noted, such fossils proved the city’s plaster quarries were studded with the ‘remains of animals that can only be of a genus now confined entirely to America, or else of another confined entirely to New Holland’.23

Finding a European marsupial radically shifted scientific thought about the history of the earth, by suggesting an ancient, extinct world in which Europe was home to creatures known only from the Americas or antipodes. Still unique, Cuvier’s specimen is so rare that it is kept in secure storage at the museum where he worked. The historian of geology Martin Rudwick suggests the flamboyant demonstration was an attempt to vindicate the predictive powers of comparative anatomy and to argue that it was as scientifically reliable as chemistry or Newtonian mathematics. This was not mere bravado, but a carefully choreographed attempt to establish Cuvier’s reputation as the world’s foremost authority on fossils and exciting new anatomy that, in turn, was crucial for new ideas about extinction.24 Cuvier’s research can easily be retold as a tale of genius and discovery, but this would misrepresent the broader context in which his research was conducted. In many senses he was a gifted man in the right place at the right time. His unrivalled access to specimens, his position in a stellar research institution, and careful detailed comparisons between fossils and bones all helped to make his claims about extinction and earth’s history significantly more compelling than they might have been without such professional and political advantages.

Educated men in world-class institutions are easily acknowledged as makers of new scientific knowledge, but public exhibitions were just as important for circulating and creating knowledge about extinction. The American incognitum was exhibited in America and toured Europe amid continued speculation about its origin and nature (Fig. 1.3). The American painter and naturalist Charles Willson Peale exhibited the skeleton of an American incognitum at his eponymous museum in Philadelphia. The bones were dug up in Orange County, New York, and heaped in a granary until Peale bought them from the landowner for $200 in 1801. Struck by their commercial potential, Peale secured permission for further excavations and eventually acquired three skeletons. Peale’s fabulously named sons, Rembrandt and Rubens, took the second of their father’s prized skeletons on tour the following year. Rembrandt wrote an illustrated pamphlet that advertised the ‘Great American Incognitum, An Extinct, Immense, Carnivorous Animal’, and explicitly used Cuvier’s research to promote the beast as a newly discovered scientific marvel. The pamphlet included extensive discussions of the beast’s anatomy, the latest scientific literature about life on earth, and legends. These included Shawnee knowledge about a great and ancient destruction, and a rabbi’s belief that the mammoth was the Behemoth of the Book of Job and would provide a ‘feast for the Jews on their restoration’.25 Given the incognitum’s close resemblance to remains dug up in Siberia and across Britain, Rembrandt advertised the beast as a mammoth and even speculated that Siberia and America were once in ‘communication, or that a deluge’ deposited the remains in America following the species’ disappearance.26

1.3 Skeleton of the Missouri Leviathan, or American Incognitum.

Exhibitions, impresarios, and promotional pamphlets may seem peripheral or irrelevant to developing notions of extinction, but they were important in multiple ways. Scholars keen to see the first almost complete reconstruction of an extinct animal exhibited in Britain took advantage of Peale’s show for their investigations and wrote scientific papers on the beast. Modern scientific research often occurs in specialist spaces such as laboratories, but natural knowledge was historically made in a much more varied range of venues we might never associate with scientific practice, from royal courts, pubs, and coffee houses, to public exhibitions.27 Rembrandt Peale’s pamphlet made Cuvier’s theories about extinction and geological catastrophes accessible far beyond the scientific elite. This introduced Cuvier to a much larger audience, including people with considerable scientific expertise who excerpted the writings for learned publications across Europe. Some of the show’s patrons might have known about the incognitum or new research on extinction beforehand, but many first encountered fossil reconstructions through such exhibitions, as we still do by visiting museums. Rembrandt was keenly aware of the value of personal observations of his exhibit: ‘Much has been said on the subject of bones found in America by persons who never saw them, but mutilated fragments of them; resting their faith upon what has been said by certain writers of science and respectability … and then falling into the error.’28 These polemical claims were an assertion of authority and an attempt to secure paying custom, but he was not alone, or wrong, in considering the exhibition an important contribution to debates about extinction. Public exhibitions and their accompanying literatures were integral to generating, and circulating, new knowledge about extinction.29 Rembrandt also left another legacy. He commissioned engravings of the specimen. Copies were sent to Paris where Cuvier worried over them as he revisited his original musings on elephants and catastrophic species loss.

A decade after Cuvier’s first investigations into living elephants and their fossilized counterparts, he ruminated at length on the elephantine ‘Ohio animal’ that so intrigued Hunter, Jefferson, and Buffon. Cuvier was already familiar with elephants, rhinos, tapirs, and the hippos. Vague similarities to elephants aside, on closer inspection Cuvier determined the animal was an extinct species distinct from elephants and mammoths, and named it the Mastodon or ‘breast-tooth’ to signify the plump mounds sitting above the molars. These helped the beast crush food, unlike the flatter, ribbon-like teeth used for grinding in elephants and mammoths.30 With a decade’s experience of examining fossilized animals and a rapidly growing list of lost species, Cuvier speculated freely about their passing: ‘before this catastrophe these animals lived in the [same] climate where their bones are now unearthed. It is this catastrophe that destroyed them there; and since they are no longer found elsewhere, it must indeed have annihilated the species.’31 Crucially, he believed that the extinct creatures were dug up where they died, rather than far from where they might have been washed away by an ancient deluge, whether Biblical or not. Rather, these beasts were stricken by a mysterious and more sudden calamity, such as climate change.

Cuvier was not the first to suggest animal extinction occurred, so it would be unwise to romanticize him as a lone genius fighting tides of ignorance. However, his careful comparisons between fossilized beasts and living animals, spanning over a decade and covering a multitude of species, yielded so much plausible evidence that megafauna such as the mammoth, mastodon, and megatherium were extinct that even cautious naturalists grew increasingly convinced. Cuvier gathered his papers on fossilized bones and extinct beasts, wrote a new introduction to the collection, and arranged for them to be published in the lavish four-volume Researches on Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds (Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes) in 1812, later superseded by a second edition in seven volumes (1821–4). The work was introduced with a lengthy, and widely distributed ‘Preliminary Discourse’ (Discours préliminaire), which boldly asserted that many calamities caused past extinctions.

Although many naturalists across the Channel read Cuvier’s work in French, periodical discussions helped circulate his ideas to a much broader audience and popularized the notion of extinction.32 Likewise, exhibitions, promotional pamphlets, and reports of his ideas were among the most accessible discussions for anyone beyond the scientific elite. Cuvier’s widely circulated research on ancient reptiles and mammals helped confirm that living fauna were radically unlike their predecessors and that an age of reptiles preceded an age of mammals. His investigations were swiftly regarded as irrefutable proof that extinction was not only possible, but an inherent process in life’s development. In a decade characterized by revolutionary political violence and European warfare, Cuvier patiently and confidently built his scientific empire through reconstructing lost ancient worlds.

Cuvier’s collected works were a ‘paper museum of fossil bones’ reprinted and circulated in transnational networks, while visitors to the Museum of Natural History in Paris might personally inspect his menagerie of skeletons.33 His new galleries of comparative anatomy were opened to the public in 1806, the same year he named the American incognitum the mastodon. Situated in a building away from the historic central galleries, Cuvier’s displays were a microcosm of his ideas about the fixity of species and classification of life into four main types, or embranchements. Stretching over several floors, the galleries showcased his research as the most authoritative explanation of nature’s order, much to the chagrin of his dissenting colleagues. Curiously, the extinct beasts so foundational for Cuvier’s reputation were either displayed and stored in his private apartments, or in the older, central galleries. A later guidebook to the museum explicitly noted the plethora of extinct species named and reconstructed by the great Monsieur: ‘The fossil bones of quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles occupy the twelve glazed cases opposite the windows … [they] are arranged according to the order adopted by M. Cuvier in his great work on fossil remains, which contains a description and figure of almost every specimen in this collection.’34 While the galleries promoted Cuvierian theories of anatomy and taxonomy, the entire site teemed with extinct beasts that affirmed his personal eminence, and the Parisian collections, for understanding extinction.35

Cuvier’s position within European scientific networks was remarkably significant during his lifetime, but his reputation faded after his death in 1832. His geological research helped establish earth as a subject of historical study, challenging theorists who framed the planet as an abstract timeless world without beginning or end. As evolutionary understandings of life gained ground in the mid-nineteenth century, his steadfast belief in unchanging species meant he fell out of favour with both biologists and historians who caricatured him as on the losing side of the evolutionary debate. His legacy was only revived in the later twentieth century when historians of science used his writings to understand broader themes such as the development of the earth sciences, or the emergence of modern scientific institutions within revolutionary Paris.36

Extinction Unbound

In the early nineteenth century, lists of extinct beasts were compiled, lost landscapes recreated, and stellar reputations forged as people imagined and debated the nature of a world before a Biblical flood. Artefacts we consider fossilized remnants of extinct flora and fauna have been encountered by humans for millennia. While ancient peoples used fragments of dinosaur eggs to make jewellery, Native nations were familiar with the large beasts of Big Bone Lick and incorporated them into accounts about the origin of bison long before Europeans worried about the incognitum.37 These fascinating insights help us trace when petrified beings were first encountered, but we must remember that their finders often invested them with very different meanings. Interpreting these remains as extinct species inhabiting lost worlds only gathered pace in the nineteenth century. The radical surgeon James Parkinson’s research on ‘shaking palsy’ led to the naming of Parkinson’s disease. As a keen geologist, he helped found the Geological Society of London in 1807, the world’s first national society devoted to the emerging discipline. His beautifully illustrated book Organic Remains of a Former World (1804–11) framed fossils as the ‘medals of creation’, revealing that ‘innumerable beings have lived, of which not one of the same kind does any longer exist’. Their sheer abundance must ‘excite the highest admiration’. The physician and renowned naturalist Benjamin Smith Barton passionately advocated for the ubiquity of extinction in 1814 when he wrote a book about extinct animals, boldly stating:

I speak of those animals as extinct. In doing this, I adopt the language of the first naturalists of the age. No naturalist, no philosopher; no one tolerably acquainted with the history of nature’s works and operations, will subscribe to the puerile opinion, that Nature does not permit any of her species of animals, or vegetables, to perish.38

Barton’s affirmation of the latest natural historical research suggests just how quickly older suspicions about extinction turned into confident assertions.

New understandings of extinction were quickly integrated into Christian theology. Parkinson imagined extinction as a process for ‘forming, destroying and reforming the earth’, and the perfection of Creation culminating in humans.39 His discussion of extinction as a cumulative process of development shows how easily new ideas about ubiquitous and recurrent processes of extinction might be incorporated into narratives of developmental progress driven by God’s laws. Others drew upon Cuvier’s research to reconcile, and recalibrate, new ideas about earth’s past with Biblical accounts of Creation.40 The Reverend William Buckland was appointed the University of Oxford’s first Reader in Geology from 1819. He felt Cuvier’s catastrophic deluge was easily read as dividing earth’s history into an antediluvian age abounding with ancient, fearsome beasts and a post-diluvian world in which Noah’s family and animals migrated over the earth to re-establish divinely created abundance. Expectations of conflict between science and religion are often rooted in assumptions that they are separate, incompatible, intellectual endeavours, but this is a modern distinction that makes it difficult to appreciate how past practitioners regarded their faith and scientific research as mutually intelligible. Over the early nineteenth century, many geologists adapted their understanding of Creation as a series of events giving rise to the highest forms of life, and extinction as a God-given law directing, and shaping, a gradual progression to ever more superior beings.41

As geologists gained a foothold in elite clubs, new societies, and universities, their ideas about extinction colonized new academic and theological terrain. Reverend Buckland’s flamboyant lectures drew crowds of students who learned of strange, extinct beings as they handled depictions of vanished worlds, including a large illustration of Peale’s mammoth, paintings of ancient landscapes, and spectacular fossils of ammonites and ichthyosaurs (Fig. 1.4). Buckland also secured fame through his research on extinct British hyenas. In 1821 he visited Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire. Geologists knew the site was studded with a pell-mell assortment of well-preserved bones from hyenas, elephants, and hippos alongside their ordure. To great acclaim, Buckland vividly reconstructed the hyenas’ diet and antediluvian den, making him the first to place an extinct species within the place it once lived, rather than where it perished or was preserved.42 While Kirkdale Cave teemed with familiar beasts, geologists grappled with accruing revelations about unknown monsters.

1.4 Scholars attending a lecture by Buckland in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

The classification of newly unearthed species as extinct kinds created a brisk market for specimens, with some of the most exquisite found by a keen-eyed young girl. The carpenter Richard Anning lived in Lyme Regis in west Dorset, an area well-known for its petrified monsters. He supplemented his income by combing the local beaches for fossils to sell to wealthy collectors. After his death, his wife Mary Anning and their children, Mary and Joseph, became expert fossil hunters in their own right. In 1811 fifteen-year-old Joseph found a peculiar skull, while twelve-year-old Mary found the rest of the skeleton a year later. After its sale to a local collector and an exhibition in London, the specimen caught the attention of many prominent geologists, and was eventually named Ichthyosaurus (‘fish lizard’) in 1817. The young Mary also found a nearly complete skeleton of another lizard-like reptile in 1823, later named Plesiosaurus (‘almost lizard’) by the geologists William D. Conybeare and Henry De La Beche (Fig. 1.5). Unfortunately, the Anning family’s precarious finances made selling the treasures an urgent necessity, and for many years Mary’s finds were attributed solely to the gentlemen who could afford to buy, keep, display, or donate them, and whose Latin names for the species were suitably accredited by the scientific elite. Mary Anning’s fossils ended up in prestigious collections such as the British Museum and Natural History Museum in London, and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Nonetheless, her personal contribution was largely relegated to children’s rhymes about the girl who sold seashells by the seashore or was erased from academic histories of geology despite buyers’ private letters referring to her as the curious ‘geological Lioness’ or ‘Princess of palaeontology’.43 In 2021, following a renaissance of interest in Anning’s finds, Britain’s Royal Mint issued commemorative 50-pence coins featuring the Temnodontosaurus, Plesiosaurus, and Dimorphodon, all first unearthed by her geological hammer.

1.5 Mary Anning’s autograph letter concerning the discovery of plesiosaurus.

1.6 Megalosaurus teeth and lower jaw.

Strange beasts dug up in the craggy coasts, quarries, and wealds of Britain were soon grouped together in a new sub-order called Dinosauria.44 Cuvier visited William Buckland in Oxford in 1818, where the reverend showed him a large lower jaw studded with teeth (Fig. 1.6). Cuvier suggested it might once have belonged to a lizard-like creature, and it was later named the ‘great lizard’ or Megalosaurus.45 In the same decade, physician and naturalist Gideon Algernon Mantell found many puzzling fragments on the Downs of Sussex. One of his most important finds was a jaw with teeth resembling those of an iguana, but clearly from a much larger herbivore. He intended to name it the Iguana-saurus (‘iguana-lizard), but eventually shunned the awkward repetition and opted for Iguanodon (‘iguana-tooth’) in 1825. Mantell also named the Hylaeosaurus (‘of the forest’): a gargantuan lizard identified from stone fragments quarried in Tilgate Forest, Sussex, that he believed might be 200 feet long.46 As lists of extinct Saurians grew, the palaeontologist Richard Owen tried to make taxonomic sense of the fearsome, antediluvian monsters. In 1842 he proposed gathering Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosaurus into a new sub-order defined by their fused vertebrae and distinctive pelvis, ribs, hands, and feet:

The combination of such characters … altogether peculiar among Reptiles … and all manifested by creatures far surpassing in size the largest of existing reptiles, will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or sub-order of saurian reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria.47

Owen’s taxonomic invention inflamed tensions with Mantell. Owen chastised Mantell for over-estimating the size of the beasts and downsized them to no more than 30 feet long. Mantell felt the sting of dishonourable conduct, and their enmity reached new depths of bitterness until Mantell’s death in 1852.48

Once prised from rocks, fossilized beasts were rehomed in private collections, commercially displayed in exhibition venues, showcased in museum vitrines, or hidden in storage. They also inhabited new literary and visual worlds in beautiful depictions of ‘deep time’.49 Henry De la Beche painted Duria antiquior in 1830 to depict the violent waters of ancient Dorset teeming with ravenous ichthyosaurs mauling plesiosaurs under a pair of sparring pterodactyls (Fig. 1.7). The evocative painting is the first to depict this lost world in such vivid, comprehensive, and lifelike detail: De la Beche commissioned his own copies, while many artists followed in his wake, plagiarizing, reworking, or creating their own visions. De La Beche’s scene gives us a glimpse into a grotesque, almost comically apocalyptic, vision of earth’s past that circulated in this period. Crucially, for many, the extinction of ancient and dangerous monsters elicited not regret, but gratitude for Divine foresight and mercy.50 Present-day sorrow for endangered and extinct species makes it difficult to appreciate how many nineteenth-century naturalists were unconcerned about or even grateful for vanished ways of being, but this view dominated early to mid-nineteenth century discussions of extinction.

1.7 Animals and plants of Dorset in the Liassic period.

Extinction was widely promoted as a ubiquitous and recurrent natural process in popular scientific writing by the 1830s. The distinguished geologist Charles Lyell wrote one of the most significant works addressing the subject. Lyell’s Principles of Geology was published in three volumes appearing annually between 1830 and 1833. The great tome proposed that earth’s geological features were best explained by observable processes acting uniformly across time, rather than by uniquely powerful catastrophes.51 The first volume provided a brief sketch of geology as a discipline and discussed the effects of a changing climate, and innumerable earthquakes, floods and volcanoes, on earth’s history. The second volume expanded on Lyell’s theories of species extinction and distribution. The final volume addressed the vexatious question of the age of the earth. Lyell regarded species as stable and characterized their extinction as naturally ubiquitous, meaning humans held ‘no exclusive prerogative’ in gaining ‘possession of the earth by conquest’. Instead, he urged his readers to accept ‘Every species’ must have ‘marked its progress by the diminution, or the entire extirpation of some other, and must maintain its ground by successful struggle against the encroachments of other plants and animals’.52 When writing about flora and fauna, Lyell inferred ‘if we wield the sword of extermination as we advance we have no reason to repine at the havoc committed’.53 Lyell’s assertions were rooted in a period when nature was considered plentiful and self-renewing, but can still feel shocking to the modern reader.

Specimens of vanished beings were precious intellectual and economic commodities that helped forge impressive reputations. In the darkening days of October 1839, Richard Owen received a puzzling bone from the surgeon John Rule, resident in New Zealand, which was included in the British colony of New South Wales from 1788, and officially a distinct colony between 1841 and 1907. Rule hoped to sell the bone for ten guineas: it was eventually bought by someone else and loaned to the Hunterian Museum in London, where it was publicly displayed, until it was donated to the British Museum in 1873. Owen believed the bone was a bird’s femur, but its size suggested something significantly bigger than any known species. Within a month, he showed the bone to his colleagues at the Zoological Society of London and, appealing to Cuvier’s method of the correlation of parts, predicted it belonged to a ‘gigantic bird of New Zealand’ which was a ‘heavier and more sluggish species than the Ostrich ’.54 Owen hoped to locate a living specimen, or a complete skeleton if the monumental bird no longer survived. In 1843 a missionary sent a fresh consignment of bones to William Buckland, who passed them on to Owen.55 He reconstructed a bird towering over his tall frame and, later that month, presented his findings to his peers at the Zoological Society (Fig. 1.8).

Owen’s reconstruction of the giant extinct bird drew widespread acclaim and, implicitly, faith in the predictive powers of Cuvier’s method. Owen’s rising star soon earned him the moniker of the ‘British Cuvier’, deposing previous holders such as Buckland.56 Unfortunately, Owen’s slipperiness meant he omitted important details, both in his original talk and in subsequent publications. When Rule sent the femur to Owen, he included a note: ‘I desire to offer for sale a portion or fragment of a bone … Part of the femor [sic] of a bird now considered to be wholly extinct.’57 Owen’s ostensible discovery of the moa was based on Rule’s tip as much as Cuvier’s principles, but he only acknowledged that Rule supplied the bone. Disenchanted by Owen’s misconduct, Rule tried to correct the record, but his contribution remained almost unknown until the 1960s, and was only recently outlined more fully by the literary scholar Gowan Dawson.58 Owen’s conduct was regarded as dishonourable by the few fellows who knew the truth. The sorry episode also reveals a great deal about Owen’s ambitious self-regard and position within the metropolitan elite. Collectors in the field, especially within the colonies, had unrivalled access to and knowledge of living specimens. They often sent or sold their specimens to well-connected, often wealthier, men in flagship scientific institutions who regarded themselves as having an exclusive authority to name new species, and therefore claim the rights of discovery. Marginalized collectors seeking credit, such as Rule, effectively challenged such entitlement. Sometimes collectors were quite explicit about their expectations. To varying degrees of reciprocity, these fragile relationships of exchange underpinned the collections of many significant scientific collections and institutions in Britain, from Kew Gardens to the British Museum.59

1.8 Richard Owen standing next to the skeleton of the Dinornis maximus (the extinct New Zealand moa).

The lost worlds of the Dinosauria were recreated on Sydenham Hill, London, in 1854 (Fig. 1.9). The landscaped gardens featured spectacular recreations of extinct creatures on three islands emerging from a primeval lake. Models of a hylaeosaur, ichthyosaur, megalosaur, and iguanodon all embellished the middle island. The beasts were fashioned from brick, iron, and cement by the illustrator and sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. His father was an artist, and his mother an heiress to wealth derived from enslaved Africans on a plantation in Jamaica. Hawkins’ reputation was founded by illustrating natural history works throughout the 1830s and 1840s. Hawkins had taken up the Sydenham commission in 1852, and was guided by Owen’s comments on sketches. Owen reimagined the low-lying crocodilian lizards of earlier writers into more mammal-like positions as reflected in the relatively upright poses of Hawkins’ sculptures. On New Year’s Eve 1853, Hawkins hosted an eight-course dinner party for twenty-one guests in the Iguanodon. Owen sat in the head of the beast, presiding over the table of luminaries. The fanciful revelry was commemorated in the following week’s Illustrated London News. The image showed a stage constructed around the Iguanodon, with waiters climbing a flight of stairs to serve the men nestled like hatchlings literally inside the belly of the beast. The paper observed the ‘philosophers’ in attendance were ‘well pleased with the hospitality of the iguanodon’.60

1.9 The Crystal Palace at Sydenham.

Sydenham also featured a cavernous glass cathedral rising proudly on the hill, which was modelled on the Crystal Palace that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851 three years earlier. The original Crystal Palace showcased arts and manufactures from all over the British Empire to visitors in Hyde Park for months. On closing, a new palace was built in suburban Sydenham, which opened in 1854, and was quickly nicknamed the People’s Palace. Both glass edifices were designed by the architect Joseph Paxton, but the Sydenham site was twice the size of the original, featured a substantially different catalogue of exhibits, and was privately owned by the Crystal Palace Company. The original was effectively an international trade fair, but its successor was dedicated to turning a profit by combining private enterprise, national education, entertainment, and spectacle. Effectively a visual encyclopaedia, the People’s Palace at Sydenham housed courts devoted to the ancient and classical empires of Egypt, Italy, Greece, Byzantium, and the more modern achievements of the Renaissance and British Empire.61 Visitors were expected to arrive on site, walk past the scenes of ancient lost worlds, enter the Palace through a court of natural history featuring flora, fauna, and models of colonized peoples, before tracing a progressive history of the rise and fall of civilizations. Anyone following the guidebooks would be encouraged to interpret their journey as retracing a direct path from monsters to imperial Britons. With 1,322,000 visitors in the first year, including 71,000 children, Sydenham proved enormously popular, and remained so, until a fire reduced the site to ashes in 1936.62 By a stroke of luck, the monsters survived; the Crystal Palace dinosaurs were designated Grade II listed buildings in 1973, and upgraded to Grade I in 2007.63 Their protected status means they still rise from the waters in the Crystal Palace Park.

Many of Cuvier’s reconstructions are still publicly exhibited in the Museum of Natural History in Paris. The landscaped gardens house a zoological park, and two galleries within dedicated buildings. The older collections, including many of Cuvier’s specimens, are exhibited in the Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy (Galerie de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie Comparée), while the modern displays form a newer Gallery of Evolution (Grande Galerie de l’Évolution). Visitors entering the Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy are confronted by a crowd of marching skeletons filed in rows behind a model of a flayed man presiding over the gallery. The rare exhibits include Louis XIV’s elephant, Louis XV’s rhinoceros, and Steller’s sea cow driven to extinction by hunting in 1768. They are exhibited alongside a pod of whales, a herd of giraffes, and other hoofed beasts. On the second floor, the palaeontological specimens include a mammoth, megatherium, dinosaurs, and a glass case showcasing the species that Cuvier identified from the Parisian gypsum.

The newer Gallery of Evolution is an astonishing spectacle of natural history specimens arranged in a central courtyard surrounded by a series of theatrical terraces. One of the side halls displays extinct and endangered species. Entering the grand and sombre hall feels like stepping into a collection of fading sculptures puncturing the darkness. This menagerie of lost ways of being are held captive behind glass under the glare of false suns. Visitors can use virtual-reality glasses to experience extinct beasts around them: Steller’s sea cow swims high in the rafters, while dodos peck at the floor, and the thylacine and smilodon (sabre-toothed cat) jump across cabinets as if making their way across uneven high ground. Entranced adults stand marvelling while enthusiastic children desperately try to touch and hold the impossible ghosts. Even though the animals were merely digital flickers, I was still surprised when their vivacious presence triggered a pang of senseless loss as I handed back my glasses.

The theory of extinction gained considerable ground in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as naturalists shifted from cautious speculation about its possibility to regarding it as an inherent natural process. Cuvier’s research on extinct beasts quickly established him as the premier authority on fossils. His important early studies of extinction were focused on megafauna carved from the Parisian rocks, specimens confiscated from European aristocracy, and engravings of beasts he never saw in person. These processes of exchange and circulation among transatlantic and global networks of scientific research helped establish the recurrent and pervasive nature of extinction and changed its epistemic status from a theologically dangerous idea to an ostensibly God-given natural law. Cuvier’s legacy encompassed formulating new theories, interpreting evidence, and creating long-standing, publicly accessible museum displays about extinction. Throughout the nineteenth century, ideas of extinction were developed within elite scientific circles, while knowledge about extinction was also created and consumed by an enormous variety of audiences through literature, art, museums, and exhibitions.

Once naturalists acknowledged that mastodons, moas, and dinosaurs all belonged to an ancient lost world, they turned to the fate of the living. Although Cuvier focused on prehistoric animals, naturalists quickly interpreted human encounters, especially within the context of European colonial expansion and the subsequent persecution of many native peoples, as a form of extinction. Many nineteenth-century writers warned that colonized peoples were dying out as a result of colonial contact and conquest. These predictions were issued for decades, particularly in the lands that became Canada, the United States of America, Australia, and Africa. Among the earliest peoples regarded as extinct victims of colonial conquest were those living in Europe’s new-found lands.

2.

The Last of Her People

The port city of St John’s rises from the eastern side of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean. The island sits near the Labrador Peninsula at the tip of the Canadian mainland bounded by the Labrador Sea. As North America’s closest seaport to Europe, St John’s has a long history of transatlantic traffic. In the spring and summer, cruise ships drop anchor and decant their passengers into the city’s streets. Most tourists quickly make their way into the bars, restaurants, and boutique gift stores close to the harbour. Others climb Signal Hill for a breathtaking 360-degree view of the ocean and the city’s wooden-clad buildings resembling colourful jelly-beans neatly standing to attention. Home to a seventeenth-century fort, Signal Hill is where inventor Guglielmo Marconi first heard the transatlantic radio signal, broadcast from more than two thousand miles away in Poldhu Wireless Station in Cornwall. Tourists often take tours around the island, or to Witless Bay ecological reserve, home to one of the world’s largest colonies of puffins. Travel guides enthusiastically recall the island’s love of ‘God and Cod’ in potted histories of migrating settlers who established the local fisheries and numerous churches of different denominations. There is a glaring absence in these practised recollections: the original inhabitants of the island. Their fate is crucial for understanding how new ideas about animal extinction were applied to humans, especially colonized nations.

Islanders and Intruders

The peopling of the Americas is a highly contentious topic among scientists interested in prehistoric human migration. There is a broad consensus that perhaps a few thousand Eurasian people crossed into North America using a long-lost land bridge called Beringia, as well as possible coastal routes along the South Pacific, and that their descendants peopled North and South America. Considerable disagreement remains about when the first crossing of Beringia occurred, how many crossings there might have been, and their exact relationship to coastal routes. From the 1930s, scientists tended towards an estimate of about 13,000 years ago for the first crossings. From the 1970s onwards archaeological finds of older sites in South America raised serious doubts. Within the last decade, DNA evidence has convinced many scientists that North America was extensively settled by at least 15,000 years ago, and the Americas may have been peopled as early as 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.1

Many of these ancient migrants settled along the Labrador coast. Archaeologists currently believe that there were three waves of prehistoric peoples who migrated from the Labrador coast and settled on Newfoundland. The first wave of ‘Maritime Archaic peoples’ flourished on the island between five and three thousand years ago, before disappearing for unknown reasons. The second wave of Early and Late ‘Paleo-Eskimos’ between 1000 BCE and 800 CE also disappeared for unknown reasons. The third wave of ‘Recent Indians’ had arrived by 50 BCE and are subdivided into three groups based after the archaeological sites where they were found: ‘Cow Head’, ‘Beaches’, and ‘Little Passage’.

Islanders formed a small nation enduring into modern times. Attempts to establish how many individuals belonged to this nation is necessarily speculative, but the most cautious and potentially reliable estimates range between 500 and 1,600 individuals descended from the Little Passage peoples by the sixteenth century. Kinship groups probably ranged from thirty to fifty-five individuals, living relatively independently without complicated hierarchies. They adorned their faces and bodies in red ochre in annual ceremonies to mark their ties to each other. Shamans connected the world of spirits to the islanders. Leaders of kinship groups and their closest relatives were laid to rest in burial huts, while others were often wrapped in birchbark or animal skins, laid in the ground, and covered in stones or soil.2

Islanders’ lives were intimately tied to seasonal bounties and coastlines teeming with seabirds, whales, seals, and fish. The skies formed part of the Atlantic flyway, a path allowing hundreds of migratory bird species to journey between Greenland, the Caribbean, and South America, along the East coast during spring (April to May) and autumn (September to October). Seabirds such as puffins, gannets, razorbills, and the great auk all formed vast breeding communities from May to June. In these months, islanders ventured seawards in canoes, shot birds with arrows, and collected eggs from nearby islands ahead of leaner winters.3 One writer observed that they ventured ‘thither once or twice every year, and return with their canoes laden with birds and eggs; for the number of sea-fowl which resort to this island to breed, are far beyond credibility’.4 In late summer, Atlantic salmon returned from the sea to spawn a new generation and provide an annual feast. In the autumn, islanders ventured further inland in search of caribou.

Intruding Europeans called the islanders the Beothuk from the 1500s onwards.5 The name was derived from the islanders’ language, but it is impossible to know how accurately Europeans repeated it. Vikings reached the island from Greenland in about 1000 CE, but quickly abandoned the land. The islanders enjoyed centuries of isolation until the Venetian explorer John Cabot sailed across the Atlantic from Bristol in search of a westward route to Asia in May 1497, supported by King Henry VII of England. Cabot sighted a coastline he named New-Found-Land in June. He observed evidence of the Beothuk’s lives but never met them.6 The Portuguese explorer Gasper de Côrte Real made the journey four years later under the auspices of the Portuguese Crown. He captured fifty locals and shipped them to Portugal, but we do not know to which nation they belonged. Cabot’s son Sebastian made the same journey eleven years later, seizing more local captives and bringing them back to England.7 Voyagers routinely enslaved local peoples by sending them to Europe in this period. Explorers and mariners provide the earliest written testimony about life on New-Found-Land. Their words reveal how dangerous it was for the people adorned with red ochre to encounter the Europeans who circulated tales of ‘Red Indians’.

Europeans were drawn to the region’s waters teeming with fish and whales. English, French, and Iberian seamen hunted for whales and cod along the Labrador coast and around Newfoundland. Initially, they established seasonal fisheries to harvest summer’s bounty. With growing traffic between England’s southwestern ports and Newfoundland, the English Crown claimed the entire island as a colony in 1610. While Europeans were limited to seasonal presences, the Beothuk took resources they believed were abandoned and reworked them into their own tools. Metal was especially useful, and they often burned abandoned boats and huts to gather nails from the ashes more efficiently, while also taking hooks, axes, and knives. These habits triggered violent reprisals once the English established a permanent settlement, which numbered three thousand by the 1700s. The Beothuk continued taking items they believed were abandoned from coastal settlements and faced severe backlash from irate intruders with very different notions of private property. Competition for resources, especially food, escalated tensions even further. Europeans treated the Beothuk as raiders illegitimately pilfering metal and food, often subjecting them to violent attacks. The Beothuk faced new diseases and were deprived of safe access to their coastal hunting grounds. As a result they increasingly shunned contact with the intruders and endured increasingly precarious lives marked by gnawing hunger. During the early eighteenth century, Europeans moved further inland following the same rivers and waterways to fish for salmon. Progressively more reliant on caribou, the Beothuk grew increasingly desperate to defend their dwindling territory, subsistence, and survival.8

Eyewitness testimonies record alarm at the lawlessness of settlers and their treatment of the Beothuk. One of the most detailed and extended accounts was penned by a British colonist named George Cartwright. He entered the military as a fifteen-year-old boy, rose to a captaincy, and accompanied his brother, the naval officer John Cartwright, on voyages around the Newfoundland coast between 1766 and 1768. On these trips George noted of the Beothuk: ‘it is thought they were then considerably more numerous than they are at present’.9 He settled into a life of trading fish and seal while writing a journal. His writing consistently recorded his visceral shock at the actions of settlers:

I am sorry to add, that the latter are much greater savages than the Indians themselves, for they seldom fail to shoot the poor creatures whenever they can, and afterwards boast of it as a very meritorious action. With horror I have heard several declared, they would rather kill an Indian than a deer!10

As evidence of settler barbarity, he reported a raiding party killing a Beothuk woman despite her pleas for mercy by pointing to her swollen, pregnant belly; they mutilated her body, then boasted of their violence to their peers. Despite recounting such an ‘inhumanity’, George Cartwright insisted he knew of actions so ‘diabolically shocking’ that he refused to discuss them further in print. His euphemistic evasion might have referred to sexual violence, but, even if not, the refusal to disclose further details given the appalling acts he did write about is notable.11 Believing only 500 Beothuk remained alive, Cartwright wrote to the Colonial Office in London with a proposal on ‘The Case of the Wild or Red Indians of Newfoundland with a Plan for their relief’ in 1774. He warned that without intervention the Beothuk were an ‘unhappy race of mortals’ who ‘will soon be extirpated’.12 He suggested removing the Beothuk to a reservation under his supervision, but the British government instead chose inaction. Cartwright’s three-volume journal was published in 1792, bringing the Beothuk’s plight to a new audience.

Fellow colonists also failed to elicit assistance from the British government. The sailor Christopher Pulling passed through Newfoundland as he ventured from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to England, in 1785. Pulling suggested that the government establish a new trading relationship with the Beothuk to ameliorate entrenched hostilities, but he was rebuffed. After a prolific career in England authoring legal disquisitions, John Reeves served as Newfoundland’s Chief Justice from 1780 until 1792 when he returned to England. Writing to Parliament, he explicitly outlined the appalling violence inflicted upon the Beothuk: ‘instead of being traded with, they are plundered, instead of being taught, they are pursued with Outrage and with Murder’.13 Even this brief catalogue of pleas bears witness to rampant violence targeting the Beothuk, and numerous vain attempts to secure parliamentary intervention. Even while advocating for imperial rule, Newfoundland’s colonial administrators explicitly recognized that settlers were persecuting the Beothuk.

Occasionally, officials explicitly articulated the Beothuk’s dispossession. Vice Admiral William Waldegrave governed the island between 1797 and 1799 and issued fresh proclamations forbidding ill treatment of the Beothuk. Despite this, the local magistrate John Bland wrote to Waldegrave expressing alarm that Europeans were failing to respect the Beothuk’s rights:

It ought to be remembered that the Savages have a right to this Island, and every invasion of a natural right, is the violation of a Principle of Justice. They have been progressively driven from South to North, and their removal has been produced by a slow and silent operation, it has nevertheless had all the effect of a violent compulsion … before the lapse of another Century, the English nation … may have affixed to its character the indelible reproach of having extirpated a whole race of people.14

Bland beseeched officials to enforce a ‘humane plan of rescuing this people from oppression’ as soon as possible.15 He recognized the Beothuk’s ‘natural right’ in terms his contemporaries understood, and possibly shared. Framing his defence as a question of justice and rights makes clear that the assertion of the Beothuk’s rights to their land, and by extension the land rights of other colonized peoples, was of concern to early colonists. Bland’s questioning is an exceptionally important reminder that we must not assume early colonists were a homogeneous mass who felt unequivocally entitled to land, or that contemporary debates about Indigenous land rights are the sole preserve of present-day activists who misunderstand the historical record. Rather, as Bland’s letter suggests, present-day debates often continue precisely because much older arguments and conflicts never established complete consensus, let alone explicit ceding of land based on shared notions of consent or property rights. Waldegrave continued petitioning for government aid without success.16 Bland’s calculation that an entire people might be lost within two or three generations proved disturbingly prescient.

Entangled Fates

In the early nineteenth century the lives of one Beothuk family were entangled with the final bouts of violent dispossession and its legacies more than anyone else from their nation. Demasduit, also known as Mary March, was born in 1796. She married Nonosabasut and they had a child together by 1819. Nonosabasut’s year of birth is unknown, but he was probably older than his wife. As leader of his group, he is often called a chief. His niece Shanawdithit, also known as Nancy or Nancy April, was born in about 1801 and possibly as late as 1806. Shanawdithit had one sister whose original name is lost, but was often called Easter Eve, and their mother was called Doodebewshet. Shanawdithit was born into a colony where officials struggled to impose their authority over settlers and to improve relations with the Beothuk, such as Governor John Duckworth who promised to reward anyone who helped with a hundred pounds in 1810.17 We know exceptionally little about the family’s early lives, and far more about their deaths, because they encountered Europeans trying to find the last of the Beothuk before the entire nation was extinct.

In 1811 young Shanawdithit witnessed an inauspicious attempt to contact her people. Governor Duckworth tasked the naval officer Lieutenant David Buchan with leading an expedition to try to track down the Beothuk. In January 1811, Buchan successfully discovered an encampment. He approached the mamateeks (tents), removed the animal skins barring entrance, and found ‘groups of men, women and children lying in the utmost consternation; they remained absolutely for some minutes without emotion or utterance.’18 His narrative gives a sense of the Beothuk’s profound fear, his surprise, and attempts to allay their concerns. He spent three and a half hours trying to prove he meant no harm through shaking hands, offering gifts, and food such as cuts of venison. Once the Beothuk acknowledged his presence, he asked if he could collect gifts for them from his base camp. The Beothuk agreed and four of them accompanied Buchan, while two of his party remained behind as a gesture of reciprocity. As Buchan’s party neared his camp, three of the accompanying Beothuk grew suspicious and ran away. Fearful of misunderstanding, Buchan trekked back to the hastily deserted Beothuk camp in bitter weather and left blankets, clothing, and pots as gifts. Buchan asked the remaining Beothuk guide to find his people and provide reassurances, but he also grew suspicious and fled when they reached a Beothuk camp where Buchan discovered the decapitated bodies of his two officers in the snow.19 Buchan hastily retreated, and spent another two years trying to ‘bring the natives into civil society’ and ‘wipe away a certain degree of stigma brought on us by the former barbarity of our countrymen’.20 He did not realize it, but watchful Beothuk, including Shanawdithit, tracked him as he searched in vain.

Just a few years later, Shanawdithit witnessed the abduction of her aunt Demasduit. John Peyton Junior, and his father John Peyton Senior, ran salmon fisheries from which hungry Beothuk took fish and tools such as knives or traps. Peyton Junior claimed he generally ignored the loss of smaller items, but he retaliated after a group of Beothuk took a large consignment of fish and more valuable articles such as silver watches while damaging some guns. Angered, Junior sought permission from Governor Charles Hamilton to search for the items and those he held responsible. After securing Hamilton’s authorization, father, son, and their men hiked up the Exploits River in March 1819, passing abandoned Beothuk camps, before veering northeast towards Red Indian Lake in March. Around the waters, one of the men fired his musket causing hidden Beothuk to flee. Tailing the party, Peyton Junior captured an exhausted Demasduit. Nonosabasut tried freeing his wife. A scuffle ensued and Peyton’s men stabbed Nonosabasut with a bayonet and fired several shots terrifying the remainder of the Beothuk. Nonosabasut lost his life. Grief-stricken and separated from her child, Demasduit was led away by captors who believed she was twenty-three years old while the child, said to be a daughter in some testimonies, died two days later. Shanawdithit witnessed the entire affair, later recounting the events in drawings, and providing evidence implying that her nation might have dwindled to seventy-two adults and children.21

Demasduit was renamed Mary March and taken to Twillingate, on New World island on the Atlantic coast, where she was held at the home of Reverend John Leigh. As she learned English, Reverend Leigh compiled a Beothuk vocabulary and distributed it to fellow missionaries. Ailing and frail with consumption, Demasduit’s health deteriorated. Lieutenant Buchan tried to return her to her people in the hope that she might act as a go-between. Foul weather forced delays, but the party finally set sail in November 1819. Demasduit died on 8 January 1820. Buchan then resolved to return her body to her people. The expedition ventured upriver in treacherous conditions and found few traces of the Beothuk. Buchan found an abandoned camp and, extraordinarily, a body they believed was Nonosabasut in a makeshift Beothuk burial ground. Buchan left Demasduit’s coffin suspended in a mamateek along with a doll and ornaments she had received while captive. He observed that ‘so little was the change in the features that imagination would fancy life not yet extinct’.22 After Buchan left, a group of Beothuk tracking him approached Demasduit’s coffin and removed the clothing within. A month later, they placed the coffin on the ground and, another two months later, she was buried in the same place as her husband.23 Shanawdithit was among the group who witnessed Buchan leave her aunt behind.

Shanawdithit, her sister Easter Eve, and their mother Doodebewshet were captured shortly after Demasduit’s death. In 1823 settlers hoping to receive the government’s reward for capturing Beothuk survivors found a lone elderly woman and her husband. He escaped, but later drowned after falling through ice. They took Doodebewshet to John Peyton Senior. Two weeks later, the men captured Doodebewshet’s daughters. The three women were taken to Peyton Senior at Exploits, Burnt Island, but they were moved by Peyton Junior to St John’s Courthouse after he alerted Buchan of the prisoners’ whereabouts and poor health. Buchan believed the women were about forty-three, twenty-four, and twenty years old. Visitors to the Courthouse observed Doodebewshet was particularly ‘morose’ and ‘looked with dread or hatred on everyone that entered the court-house’.24 Today we might interpret her demeanour as profound shock and trauma unrecognized by almost everyone around her.

Buchan arranged for Peyton Junior to return Doodebewshet and her daughters to the Exploits River. Peyton built them a house, provided a boat, and regularly left food for them. Weeks passed. Doodebewshet tended to her daughter’s quickening consumption. Eve finally succumbed, followed by her mother. Shanawdithit remained with Peyton Junior’s family for five years. She was visited by Bishop John Inglis. He lamented the Beothuk had not been converted to Christianity, which he equated with the progress of civilization, and that Shanawdithit had not learned enough English to be baptized. He noted her fear that her family had probably starved to death. He left beseeching her to convert, and hoping she might convey his faith to her people.25 She later divulged that she believed only about fifteen of her people remained alive when she was captured. Her precise status, or how she felt about what amounted to house arrest, is difficult to pinpoint. Nicknamed Nancy April after the month of her capture, she occasionally slipped away to visit the graves of her mother and sister and talk to them. A fellow servant described these visits as the result of ‘melancholy moods’ and called her ‘foolish’ for believing she was speaking to her mother and sister, but Shanawdithit insisted: ‘yes they here, me see them and talk to them’.26 This minute trace of her ties of kinship is starkly distinctive from so many stories about her. In these words we encounter her refusal to forgo meaningful solace while enduring an isolation barely understood by everyone around her, even those convinced she was the last of her people.27

William Epps Cormack founded the Beothuk Institution (originally ‘Boeothick’) in St John’s, Newfoundland, in 1827. A merchant, explorer and natural historian, Cormack hoped his new venture might ensure ‘a reconciliation of the Aborigines, to the approaches of civilization’. Despite acknowledging that settler violence made the Beothuk wary of contact with the intruders, he vowed ‘I will by degrees have them civilized’.28 Cormack made several expeditions to find Beothuk in the early years of the nineteenth century, but without success. Given this interest in survivors, he and his peers at the institution resolved that Shanawdithit ought to be ‘under the paternal care’ of the institution.29 After Peyton Junior received compensation, Shanawdithit moved to St John’s. While she learned English, Cormack continued searching for the Beothuk, but he never found any alive. When he stumbled across the bodies of Demasduit and Nonosabasut, he stole their skulls and various artefacts. After failing to find any living Beothuk on several expeditions, Cormack concluded they were in imminent danger of extirpation – or already extinct.30

Shanawdithit remained with Cormack in St John’s, where he tried to elicit information about her life and where people were increasingly convinced that she was the last of the Beothuk (Fig. 2.1). He taught her English, methodically interviewed her about Beothuk life, and collected the drawings and artefacts she made with the paper and coloured pencils he provided. Her sketches confirm she witnessed the killing of Lieutenant Buchan’s men in 1811, and the capture of her aunt Demasduit. Shanawdithit’s recollections are the only surviving testimony from the Beothuk of these events.31 She confided that her people believed anyone reconciling with settlers would never find happiness in the afterlife or be buried with the material artefacts that they needed for the journey. Moreover, individuals making or seeking contact were often sacrificed to the munes (spirits).32 These confidences reveal the precautions the Beothuk took to protect themselves from colonial encounter and encroachment. It is impossible to know whether such threats were acted upon, but even their circulation suggests that the Beothuk deliberately prohibited contact with the intruders for decades. Cormack’s unpublished notes and materials are mostly lost, but some drawings and artefacts survive in the museum vaults at St John’s. Shanawdithit’s drawings are rarely exposed to light for fear of damage and are only accessible by special request. Delicate pencil sketches, they look fragile enough to be rubbed out with even the lightest of touches. Shanawdithit drew her own people, or details about them, with a red pencil, while outsiders were all drawn in black. They bear Cormack’s annotations recording additional details from her. One of the most moving is a map depicting the capture of Demasduit, from the memories of her niece. They are among the most important records of Beothuk life ever produced by a Beothuk individual, and the only records produced by a Beothuk individual that survive in a colonial archive. Viewing them is an exceptionally painful confrontation with the entangled legacies of empire and extinction.

2.1 Shanawdithit, c. 1820s.

Shanawdithit died on 6 June 1829; she was described in the parish register as ‘very probably the last of the aborigines’ of Newfoundland.33 Cormack sent an obituary to The Times of London about the ‘interesting female [who] lived six years a captive among the English’. He noted ‘there has been a primitive nation, once claiming rank as a portion of the human race, who have lived, flourished, and become extinct in their own orbit’. Cormack described the process as being ‘dislodged, and disappeared from the earth’.34 The local doctor, William Carson, conducted a post-mortem, and used the procedure to remove Shanawdithit’s scalp and skull. Her remains were buried in a graveyard in St John’s harbour. Carson sent her skull to London’s Royal College of Physicians as a specimen of presumed scientific interest. The remains were moved to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1938, and are believed to have been destroyed by a German bomb during the Second World War.35 Sightings of other Beothuk were reported after Shanawdithit’s death in 1829, but she quickly gained notoriety as the ‘last’ of her people.

Enduring Nations

Writers repeatedly described the Beothuk as extinct throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in scholarly publications, newspapers and periodicals. Seven years after Shanawdithit’s death, her biography served as a cautionary tale about ‘the last of the Boëothics’ in a series on ‘Sketches of Savage Life’ in Fraser’s Magazine. Her death was lamented as the extinguishing of a people who ‘passed from the face of the earth, ignorant of the good or evil of civilisation; and yet their name will be recorded in the annals of the western world’. The author observed ‘it must not be forgotten they were shot by the English and French fishermen and traders, with as little scruple as if the Boëothics were red foxes’.36 Bishop Inglis wrote about his meeting with Shanawdithit for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1856, and explicitly named her the last of her people. The anthropologist T. G. B. Lloyd conducted significant research on the Beothuk in the 1870s. Lloyd’s research was presented at the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1875. He was unable to present the paper in person, but it was read out at a meeting by the Director of the Anthropological Institute and later published in the Institute’s journal. Lloyd’s article outlined a brief history of colonial settlement in Newfoundland and longer summaries of relevant ethnographic information. At the reading, several items were exhibited for the society’s fellows, including a lock of Shanawdithit’s hair, a tooth taken from a Beothuk woman (presumably without consent after her death, but not specified), and spears. Lloyd reported that the Beothuk were supposedly extinct, but did caution that ‘of their ultimate fate nothing is known with certainty’.37 The geologist James P. Howley compiled an anthology of primary sources over four decades in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including interviews with Peyton Junior and others who directly encountered the Beothuk. His research was published as a book in 1915, which described the Beothuk as extinct.38 Howley’s book, and claims about extinction, became one of the most important sources for all future histories of the Beothuk.

The anthropologist Frank G. Speck challenged the consensus regarding Beothuk extinction in the early twentieth century. He trained with Franz Boas, who is widely recognized as transforming American anthropology, and the discipline more broadly, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Boas argued that culture was not a universal absolute because ‘each and every civilization is the outcome of its geographical and historical surroundings’.39 He urged anthropologists to research peoples, and their cultures, within their own context as this was the only way to understand both humanity’s evolution and the nature and meaning of culture. His cultural relativism influenced generations of anthropologists, including Speck, who gained his PhD in 1908 and was an expert in Native languages, and a passionate collector. One obituary of Speck noted that Native nations ‘became his life. His office and his home literally became museums filled with material culture of these people.’ Moreover, ‘From the ashes of destruction he moved about in the north-east salvaging scraps of cultures that everyone else believed to be long dead.’40 Speck’s fieldwork in Newfoundland was published in his book Beothuk and Micmac in 1822. Drawing on interviews with local peoples, Speck reasoned that his colleagues’ conviction about Beothuk extinction was rooted in a failure to appreciate that interviewees might not want to divulge the true extent of intermarriage among the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq.

Despite Speck’s doubts about Beothuk extinction, he was still surprised in 1910 when he met Santu Toney, an elderly woman of Beothuk heritage (Fig. 2.2). He recollected:

In July, 1910, I happened to talk over ethnological matters with a family of Micmac who were temporarily camped near Gloucester, Mass. The family consisted of an aged woman, her son, his wife and child. They all spoke Micmac. The family name was Toney. On inquiring of the young man, Joe Toney, where he was born, he told me in Newfoundland. Then becoming more interested, I inquired if his mother was a native of Newfoundland, and he replied that she was. After a few minutes’ talk with his mother, he said that she was not a true Micmac, but that her father was an Osa’yan’a Indian from Red Pond, Newfoundland. This naturally startled me, because it referred indirectly to the supposedly extinct Beothuk.41

Knowing that the Mi’kmaq’s tongue referred to the Beothuk as Osa’yan’a, Speck delved further. He was intrigued by Santu’s family ties, both as evidence of movement between Native nations in Newfoundland, and also as a possible insight into the fate of the Beothuk.

2.2 Santu Toney, with her son Joe Toney.

Over several months, Speck interviewed Santu with Joe’s help as a translator. Speck established that Santu’s mother was a Mi’kmaq from Nova Scotia. Santu’s father, named Kop, was raised among the Mi’kmaq, but she believed that he was not a true Mi’kmaq. Instead, she confided he was taken and raised among the Mi’kmaq, but born near Red Pond (Red Indian Lake), and coated in red ochre when a child. Santu’s mother died when she was relatively young, and she subsequently moved to Nova Scotia with her father. Santu was married twice: initially to a Mohawk man and, after his death, a Mi’kmaq man with whom she had four or five children, including Joe Toney. Remarkably, Santu remembered a song she learned from her father. Speck recorded her singing and it remains the only known trace of Beothuk song. He regarded Santu’s Beothuk descent as entirely plausible given the extent of intermarriage between the Mi’kmaq and Beothuk, but noted: ‘My only distrust of the material she was able to give lies in the accuracy of her memory, especially in regard to her vocabulary.’42 Speck corresponded with Howley about Santu, but Howley dismissed Santu’s testimony and framed the Beothuk as extinct in his published work. In recent years, the historian Chris Aylward interviewed Santu’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter, Ivy Toney and Ardy Landry, for his documentary The Beothuk Story (2021) which traces Beothuk migration and intermingling with other nations.43 This research is important, but there are even more significant accounts of Beothuk migration and endurance.

Chief Mi’sel Joe of the Miawpukek First Nation in Newfoundland and Labrador is a significant critic of established narratives of Beothuk extinction. He notes: ‘Among all of us, there is Beothuk blood somewhere in our genes, through the intermarriage that took place … Not only through Conne River, but particularly on the west coast of Newfoundland.’44 Mi’kmaq oral histories recall Beothuk fleeing to the mainland as settlers encroached on their territories to find new communities. European records of Beothuk intermarrying with Mi’kmaq corroborate Chief Joe’s historical knowledge. Even if the imperial archive did not substantiate his history, anyone dismissing his claim in favour of colonial officials documenting extinction would be wise to reflect on whose evidence they are willing to treat as plausible, reliable, or true – and why. Claims of Beothuk extinction favour written histories, especially the preserved paperwork of state bureaucracy, over other forms of historical knowledge, particularly oral histories. Whether implicitly or explicitly, this tendency denies that peoples with long-standing practices of oral record-keeping have reliable ways of transmitting historical knowledge that historians of extinction, and empire more broadly, must acknowledge, respect, and incorporate into their own scholarship.45

Scientific research on Beothuk remains has consistently tried to unravel their migration and fate. When William Cormack disturbed the grave of Nonosabasut and Demasduit in 1827, he stole the couple’s skulls, a model of a birchbark canoe, clothing, and other artefacts. He sent them to his former university tutor Robert Jameson, a professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh for fifty years and curator at the University’s Museum. On accession the couple’s names were replaced with registration numbers: 1827.25.1 for Nonosabasut and 1825.25.2 for Demasduit. Their individual identities were erased and replaced with attributed codes of scientific cataloguing to seal claims of newly transferred ownership. In the 1850s, the skulls were absorbed into the collections that ultimately became the National Museums of Scotland. The surgeon and naturalist George Busk examined the skulls of Nonosabasut and Demasduit as ‘two authentic specimens’ of the ‘aboriginal Indian inhabitants’ of Newfoundland and wrote an illustrated description published in 1876.46 Cormack publicly acknowledged finding the grave but not his theft.

At some point, perhaps by Cormack’s hand or more likely a museum worker, the skulls were desecrated with inscriptions. Nonosabasut’s skull was labelled a ‘Male Red Indian Newfoundland’, ‘chief’, ‘Mr Cormack’, and ‘1827–25’, and ‘Mongolian’ later scratched over. Other annotations were too faded to read when osteologists examined the skulls in 2009. The words ‘Female Red Indian Newfoundland’ were scrawled across Demasduit’s skull.47 The violation performed multiple functions valued by scientists and museum workers from the nineteenth century to the present day: the text authenticated the bones in terms of geography, racialized them in nineteenth-century scientific terminology, and traced their passage across the Atlantic through Cormack’s theft. These processes transformed the bones of Nonosabasut and Demasduit into prized anatomical specimens eagerly examined to understand Beothuk anatomy, evolution, and extinction, rather than their lives, inner worlds, or burials. Their treatment is just one example from a much longer history of Europeans collecting skulls to forge disturbing hierarchies of value between humans.48

DNA samples from the stolen skulls of Nonosabasut and Demasduit are still incorporated into scientific studies tracing Beothuk migration and descent.49 In the early 2000s a group of scientists applied to the National Museums of Scotland for access, and were granted permission to examine the skulls with techniques that make for distressing reading. The team removed a tooth from each skull, cut their roots open, drilled out the inner tissue, dissolved the powdered remains into a liquid solution, extracted mitochondrial DNA, cloned the DNA to ‘amplify’ the samples, and used them to explore the ancestry of Nonosabasut and Demasduit.50 Mitochondria are tiny organelles living inside living cells with a nucleus, with their own DNA. Mitochondria provide useful markers to track matrilineal descent because they are only inherited through the maternal line. In an article published in 2007, the team concluded that the Beothuk probably shared ancestors with present-day Mi’kmaq, and that Nonosabasut and Demasduit had no European ancestry. Almost a decade later, after extracting DNA from prehistoric inhabitants of Newfoundland and the Beothuk, another study concluded that northeastern North America and Newfoundland were populated by waves of migration by peoples sharing a common ancestor not in the recent past, but significantly earlier than any arrivals on the island.51

Many studies of skulls, from the nineteenth century to the present, were either conducted without consent, or consent from institutions such as museums, with very few securing consent from the closest surviving kin, communities, or nations. In 2019 a new study revisited the issue of the migration and persistence in collaboration with the Miawpukek First Nation. Chief Mi’sel Joe argued that the new research would allow First Nations finally to tell their history from their own perspective. The published article concluded that Beothuk mitochondrial DNA persisted in present-day peoples such as Mi’kmaq. Press reports featured brief histories of colonization, claims of Beothuk extinction, and barely concealed disbelief at the corroboration of oral histories.52 Historic claims of extinction have created such powerful expectations of total annihilation that many remain shocked by the mere possibility of a continued existence for the Beothuk.

Genetic testing traces Beothuk migration in new ways, but its commercial use is highly controversial. The biotechnology company Viaguard/Accu-Metrics provides commercial forensic services, paternity testing, and genetic screening for cancer. The company originally offered genealogy testing specializing in either ‘First Nation, Metis and Native American DNA’ or ‘African Ancestry DNA’.53 When the retired teacher Carol Reynolds-Boyce used their services in 2016, they were the only firm claiming the capacity to test for Beothuk ancestry.54 Boyce sent her DNA to Accu-Metrics and received results suggesting she might have Beothuk ancestors, while her mother and brother were given the same assurances. When the results were reported in the press, geneticists insisted no one had enough information to make direct connections between living people and known Beothuk individuals through DNA testing.55 Nonetheless, Reynolds-Boyce’s declared herself the Chief of the Beothuk First Nation – after her mother and brother elected her – and started a Facebook group dedicated to the ‘Beothuk Tribe of Newfoundland and North America Reservation Nation’.56 Reynolds-Boyce insisted that the DNA test was merely proof of what she already knew, but the company subsequently withdrew their claims about testing for specific racial identities.

The reliability of Viaguard/Accu-Metrics testing has raised broader concerns. In 2018 a Canadian man Louis Côté used the company’s services to trace his ancestry. He submitted three samples. Two of them were swabs of his own cheek but labelled with his own name, and his father’s. The last sample was taken from a pet chihuahua, but labelled with his adopted son’s name. The results were all identical and claimed all three individuals had Indigenous ancestry. Côté sent the samples to the company for testing, including of his dog, because he grew suspicious of the tests while working with the Confederation of Aboriginal People of Canada. The press scandal centred on the possibility that the tests were providing false evidence of Indigenous ancestry.57 While the case raises exceptionally difficult questions for Viaguard/Accu-Metrics, focusing on reliable testing does not address the more significant issue of what the results might meaningfully prove.

Ancestry services are popular ways of exploring family histories and descent, but their meanings are significantly more uncertain than slick promotional campaigns suggest. Customers’ samples are used to create a DNA fingerprint which is compared for its statistical similarity to a database of reference populations using algorithms. Based on these comparisons, companies provide customers with estimates of percentages of the DNA matching different ancestral groups to varying degrees of specificity, including ancient groups, continents, or more specific categories such as countries. DNA fingerprinting is exceptionally accurate, but any claim about ancestry depends entirely on the reference populations, which is why many results are supplied with levels of confidence to support the claims. Commercial companies currently use multiple sources for their references: the Human Genome Diversity Project, International HapMap Project, 1000 Genomes Project, and private initiatives. The skulls of Nonosabasut and Demasduit have been reliably identified by a strong trail of independent evidence. Things are much trickier when this is not possible and reference populations rely on individual self-reporting or small sample sizes. Self-reporting is not inherently false, but many customers do not appreciate that ancestry services rely on the self-identification of their reference populations as being a priori true. At least one commercial company relies on individuals who report their grandparents were all born in the same country to support subsequent claims about ancestry.58 Ultimately, these problems might be surmounted with better data, but they would still not necessarily establish recognized connections to any Native nation.

Commercial ancestry testing makes it commonplace for customers to claim they belong to a Native nation after receiving their results. Kim TallBear specializes in unravelling the complicated politics of ancestry testing and racial science. Her book Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (2013) explores how people relying on DNA to claim belonging privilege ancestry testing over other forms of kinship or belonging. Ancestry testing depends on trying to establish, and impose, the authority of DNA testing above other kinds of evidence. This biological essentialism reduces kinship to molecules over relationships, and ignores each nation’s own criteria for who belongs, and its sovereign right to decide the boundaries of the nation.59 As TallBear argues, ancestry testing continues a profoundly harmful history of trying to define race in discrete and concrete biological terms, while ignoring Native sovereignty, kinship, and relations in defining who is Native.

While historic paths of Beothuk migration remain elusive, the journeys of Beothuk bodies and arts to museums and medical collections all over the world are well documented. The skulls of Nonosabasut and Demasduit languished in Edinburgh for nearly two centuries, taken and experimented on without the consent of their closest living communities, until Chief Mi’sel Joe started a campaign to secure their return home in 2015. He visited the skulls and repeatedly asked for their return. A meeting of the Scottish Parliament in the same year discussed possibilities for return. A Member of the Scottish Parliament enquired about the Scottish government’s plans for the ‘remains of the last two members of the Beothuk tribe’. The Cabinet Secretary confirmed museum officials met campaigners and explained the ‘established mechanism for making a formal repatriation request’, and noted they expected an official claim soon. The MSP welcomed the news and stated:

the keeping of skulls is surely not a 21st-century response to the common humanity that we share with these two individuals, who were the last recorded individuals of this tribe, which was wiped out probably because of environmental pressures on their hunting grounds, as well as by cultural pressures. Perhaps it would be an appropriate response to that shared humanity to ensure that, when the request comes, it is dealt with speedily and in a humane fashion, so that we can set the matter to rest.60

Early repatriation procedures often required direct descendants to make claims; more recently, this has broadened to include collective requests from communities with established historical connections and cultural continuities.

The Canadian government issued a formal request for the return of Nonosabasut and Demasduit in 2018, with the museum’s trustees accepting the claim in 2019. The couple’s skulls were initially transferred to the Canadian Museum of History, Ottawa, and moved again to the Museum at St John’s.61 Chief Joe noted that while the Beothuk no longer existed as a distinctive nation, their closest First Nations were ready to welcome them home: ‘There is no Beothuk First Nation community, but once they are back in Newfoundland, the government and the First Nations will decide.’62 Unfortunately, many others will be denied their last rites and eternal rest until they attract the same dedication. Since the 1990s, the theorist Robert Gerald Vizenor has suggested the importance of recognizing ‘Survivance’ as the ‘active sense of presence’ that serves to renounce the erasure of Native lives within so many histories of America, as well as accounts of extinction.63 His insistence on the ‘active’ nature of survivance is an important reminder that, despite the repeated claims of settlers and scientists, these histories are living legacies that require redress.

Museums are far too often someone’s unwanted grave or prison. Countless people were taken, in whole or in part, without consent and incorporated into practices of trade, collection, acquisition, and display. They lie in stores in violation of the wishes of the dead, their descendants, peoples, or beliefs. Museums have acknowledged and wrestled with this inheritance for decades with relatively little public interest beyond those most directly affected, whether descendants or nations. The British government passed the Human Tissue Act in 2004 in response to a scandal in which some hospitals retained organs, primarily of children, for research without consent. Grieving parents and relatives were distraught knowing their children were denied being whole for their last rites. In response to these horrific revelations, the Act established new legal protections for anyone whose death fell within the last century. The Act also included a section allowing museums to de-accession and repatriate people, whole or otherwise, less than a thousand years old, after requests from Australian and Tasmanian peoples for the return of their ancestors.64 Some museums have already repatriated ancestors, while others are in the process of identifying descendants and nations in the hope of securing their return. Other institutions refuse to countenance repatriation and reparation.

The cemetery where Shanawdithit was laid to rest was marked for redevelopment in 1903. Her original resting place is now marked by a stone landmark bearing a plaque a few hundred feet from where her original grave may have been. A bronze statue of her also stands at the Beothuk Interpretation Centre in Boyd’s Cove, Newfoundland. A newer memorial plaque in Bannerman Park, St John’s, marks her as a person of national historic significance.65 First revealed in 2007, the plaque includes inscriptions in English and French that state:

Shanawdithit is remembered as the last of the Beothuk. Seized by English settlers in 1823, this young woman never regained her freedom. She taught her captors much of what is now known of the decline and dispersal of her people, even though she held no hope for the survival. Aided by her sketches, she described encounters between the British and Beothuk, including the capture of her aunt Demasduit. Shanawdithit died on June 6, 1829 and was buried in St John’s. Her legacy gives a unique insight into the final chapter of her people’s history.

The plaque adorns a large grey boulder resembling a roughly hewn headstone that is surrounded by flowers. Visiting the memorial feels almost like standing at a grave where anyone might wish Shanawdithit, her uncle, and aunt, the undisturbed rest they were denied by settlers intent on finding the last of the Beothuk.

Shanawdithit’s image and biography have served as the face of violent imperial dispossession from the time of her death, but this can easily perpetuate damaging myths of total annihilation. Claims of Beothuk extinction often depend on a range of unwarranted assumptions. Most obviously, it assumes that in the nine years between Shanawdithit’s capture and her death, all other Beothuk died. Yet, her family group numbered twelve or thirteen strong and some may have outlived her. It also assumes there was little or no migration between Beothuk and other nations, but multiple forms of evidence suggest otherwise, including genetic testing, colonial archives, and, more reliably, oral histories of First Nations. This is especially true of Santu Toney’s testimony, about both her Beothuk heritage, her parents, and other couples.

As the remnants of Nonosabasut, Demasduit, and Shanawdithit traversed the Atlantic Ocean, claims that the Beothuk were extinct grew into broader assumptions about the fate of colonized peoples. Lamenting Beothuk extinction, scholars predicted that other peoples would soon be nothing but a memory. The physician James Cowles Prichard addressed the issue in an article ‘On the Extinction of Human Races’ in 1839. Best remembered as a founding father of modern anthropology, he spent his life collecting and analysing accounts of human difference to prove humans were a single species. He believed that ‘Wherever Europeans have settled, their arrival has been the harbinger of extermination to the native tribes.’ Prichard’s intellectual concern for the loss of data about human variation was intertwined with moral alarm and calls to ‘prevent the extermination of the aboriginal tribes’.66 While he was sensitive to the contrast between decline through violent persecution and the inherent loss in nature, his peers slowly stopped observing the distinction.67 Repeatedly reframing dispossession, persecution, and extermination as part of a process of natural extinction created more than just a rhetorical slippage between death and prophesied doom. As the century wore on, the Beothuk were frequently named as early casualties in a lengthening list of peoples doomed, or lost, through European imperial expansion across the world, especially in North America.

3.

The Dispossessor’s Lament

As Thomas Jefferson pondered the fate of apparently extinct beasts across the North American continent, his thoughts were also occupied by the rapid decline of Native nations. Jefferson’s well-known Notes on the State of Virginia, first written in 1781 but only publicly circulated after revisions in 1787, claimed Native peoples were reduced to ‘about one-third of their former numbers’, including nations reduced to as little as ‘three or four men only’, ‘10 or 12 men, tolerably pure from mixture with others colours’, and ‘A few women constitute the remains of that tribe’.1 Jefferson lamented the decline partly because he was captivated by the ‘noble savage’, the romanticized theory that many colonized peoples lived so blissfully attuned to nature that their way of life was preferable to, and innocent of, the corrupting influence of Europeans.2 Jefferson hoped that Native peoples would assimilate into colonial society by abandoning seasonal occupation, or ‘nomadism’ in the language of the day, in favour of being settled, independent agriculturalists or merchants, like Europeans. His hopes depended upon a broader belief that European farming was the most productive use of land, and so more highly civilized than noble wanderings.3 Jefferson imagined a slow process of acculturation and absorption that would create a new kind of citizen. His statistics exaggerated the depletion because he relied on the 1669 census which only included warriors, but his belief in the ‘vanishing Indian’ was widespread.

After the American Revolutionary War (1775–83) freed the American colonies from British rule, many leaders of the new republic predicted that Native nations were on the verge of dying out. Over the nineteenth century in North America, several major policies were proposed for tackling the perceived decline: removal, reservations, and residential schools. All three contributed to growing Native dispossession. In the later nineteenth century, the establishment of national parks consolidated a much longer process of confiscating Native lands. Claims about doomed races across the United States helped shape much broader debates about empire, land, and the environment, with significant consequences for the meaning of extinction, and the making of the modern world.

Dispossession in the New Republic

Eighteenth-century forays into the interior grew into a rush of colonizers seeking ever more lands by the early nineteenth century. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 – involving the acquisition from the French First Republic of Louisiana and considerable land west of the Mississippi – brought a vast new territory under American rule, Jefferson suggested Eastern nations ‘exchange for lands beyond the Misip [sic.]’.4 Rather more brashly, President James Monroe later insisted: ‘The hunter of savage state, requires, a greater extent of territory to sustain it, than is compatible with the progress and just claims of civilized life, and must yield to it. Nothing is more certain, than, if the Indian tribes do not abandon that state, and become civilized, that they will decline, and become extinct.’5 Monroe deemed a ‘compulsory process’ the only remedy to the upswell in demands for land from European emigrants arriving in the United States in search of new opportunities.

Colonists’ dreams of acquiring territory were chastened by the refusal or reluctance of Native nations to cede their homelands to settlers’ unslaked thirst for land, whether acquired by conflict, theft, squatting, or state-sanctioned cession. Ned Blackhawk’s monumental book The Rediscovery of America (2023) beautifully challenges the under-estimation of Native power in American histories. Of this period, he observes: ‘despite the bloodshed, native peoples outside the original thirteen colonies maintained control over the majority of North America, which remained in 1783 predominantly Indian Country’. In this period, the possibility of trading furs and taking land attracted colonists further westward into the continent’s interior. Sometimes territory was ceded through treaties, but many Native leaders fought to maintain their rightful lands. As Blackhawk argues, treaty-making in the later eighteenth century and ‘Indian sovereignty helped to clarify when, where, how, and upon whom American laws operated. The sovereignties of Indian nations and of the United States were interrelated.’6 When the United States constitution was drawn up in 1787, it granted citizenship only to white men, underpinning the dispossession of Native peoples and enslaved Africans.

The new republic soon passed legislation to wrest land from Native peoples under the guise of humanitarian intervention. In 1830, under the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the United States passed legislation inaugurating the forced removal of peoples east of the Mississippi to the west. Eventually known as the Indian Removal Act, Jackson rationalized the new legal power by claiming that the spectre of certain extinction hovered over the eastern nations unless action was taken to move them to the west. Infamously, in Jackson’s first Annual Message to Congress in December 1829, he claimed:

Our ancestors found them [Indians] the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion and force, they have been made to retire from river to river, and from mountain to mountain; until some of the tribes have become extinct, and others have left but remnants, to preserve, for a while, their once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites, with their arts of civilization, which, by destroying the resources of the savage, doom him to weakness and decay; the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware, is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them, if they remain within the limits of the States, does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert such a great calamity.7

Jackson faced vigorous opposition. Four months later, Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen delivered a long speech in the Senate opposing removal, and in support of the Native nations who had no desire to move. He maintained that ‘God, in his providence, planted these tribes on this Western continent … before Great Britain herself had a political existence.’ As such, he demanded to know, ‘in what code of the law of nations, or by what process of abstract deduction, their rights have been extinguished? Where is the decree or ordinance that has stripped these early and first loads of the soil?’ Utterly convinced that Jackson and his supporters were straying beyond any valid claim, the senator insisted that ‘from the principles of eternal justice, no argument can shake the political maxim, that, where the Indian always has been, he enjoys an absolute right still to be, in the free exercise of his own modes of thought, government and conduct’.8 Despite such passionate defences of Native rights, and bitter fights over the principle of removal, the legislation eventually passed with a majority of just one vote.9 Jackson’s commitment to removal is a telling indication that he, and his supporters, were convinced that westward expansion could not be halted, or at least willingly contemplated. The only remedy that Jackson pursued was through expulsion to designated territory of the government’s choosing. In this guise, Federal Indian Policy tried regulating relationships already under contestation and negotiation between the new republic and Native nations, while facilitating their rapid dispossession.

In the early to mid-nineteenth century, Americans regarded Eastern Native nations as deeply corrupted by their contact with settlers, as practically non-existent, or in desperate need of paternalistic protection from impending extinction.10 This implicitly reimagined truly Native peoples as either belonging to a past with more abundant populations, or living west of the then uncolonized Mississippi River. President Jackson simultaneously argued that removal would protect deported nations while presiding over legal provision for future extinction by stating that the ‘United States will forever secure and guaranty to them [removed Indians], and their heirs or successors, the country so exchanged with them … Provided always, That such lands shall revert to the United States, if the Indians become extinct, or abandon the same’.11 Ultimately, the Indian Removal Act depended upon accepting that extinction was not only possible, but likely enough to require pre-emptive legislation.

Significant westward expansion in the 1840s and 1850s increased pressure on Native nations to cede their lands and a policy shift from removal to reservations. Removal forcibly relocated Native nations to live in a western ‘Indian Territory’, whereas reservations were areas of land held and governed by federally recognized Nations.12 Between 1845 and 1850 the Union expanded as Texas, California, and Oregon either gained statehood or came under US control, and Mexico ceded a vast southwestern territory after the Mexican-American War (1846–8).13 As one historian notes, ‘It was not long, however, before the idea of moving a few Indians out of the way became a policy of confining all Indians in the out-of-the-way places.’14 The government used reservations to forgo enforced relocation in favour of paternalistic attempts to control and assimilate Native peoples. Supporters of reservations believed confinement and segregation were essential to eventual assimilation. In effect, reservations were an assumed middle ground between colonial encroachment and future citizenship.

Suspected governmental corruption, inefficiency within the Bureau of Indian Affairs, tensions following the American Civil War (1861–5), and events such as the Sand Creek massacre in Colorado Territory of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by the US Army in 1864 prompted a congressional investigation into the state of Native nations in 1865.15 Senator Doolittle’s subsequent report on the Condition of the Indian Tribes (1867) summarized the responses to a questionnaire initially circulated to politicians, army officers, agents, and missionaries. Although predominantly concerned with the improvement of the Indian service and future of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (the report recommended it remain with the Department of the Interior rather than be moved to the War Department), it also collated information on the state of Native populations and suggested possible avenues for change. Significantly, twenty of the twenty-seven respondents felt Native populations were decreasing, while only one observed an increase. The demise was attributed to: ‘Providence, the encroachment of the white man, civilization in all its forms, inefficient and unfaithful agents, injustice and abuse, want of proper judicious attention – all these cause the extinction of the Indian race.’16 When asked to propose curative measures, respondents suggested ‘there is none’ to ‘the only practical remedy to prevent the total extinction of the Indian tribes, is to separate them entirely from the white race’.17 Ultimately, the committee suggested that, as customary ‘hunting grounds are taken away, the reservation system, which is the only alternative to their extermination, must be adopted’.18

Government policies designed to assimilate Native peoples through allotment were introduced in the 1880s. Senator Henry Dawes guided the General Allotment Act into the statute books in 1887. Essentially, the Act legalized dividing reservations into smallholdings owned by individuals, rather than in common by a Native nation, and made holders of allotted land citizens of the United States. Allotment was designed to transform Native people into settled farmers. Significantly, by stipulating how much land individuals needed, the Dawes Act effectively endorsed the federal redistribution of ostensibly ‘surplus’ land for purchase by settlers and commercial development, particularly by railway companies. Intended to create a farming nation, supporters of allotment hoped to free up lands they valued but believed ‘wasted’. Spurred on by the conviction that hunting and gathering was inherently inefficient compared to farming, allotment’s supporters maintained Native nations must be ‘civilized’ for everyone’s benefit.19 Meanwhile, as noted by its original subjects and subsequent historians, the Act implicitly depended upon the notion of Native extinction, since it made no provision for a future increase in Native populations.20 Ultimately in 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Indian Reorganization Act, or Indian New Deal, abolished allotment and tried restoring Native self-government on reservations.21

Many campaigners regarded forced assimilation as urgent, necessary, and a humanitarian endeavour, especially through residential schools for Native children. The government adopted assimilation as a policy in the 1880s, but some federally funded residential schools were established earlier. Between 1819 and 1969 at least 408 Native boarding schools were established with federal funding across thirty-seven states, but recent research suggests that more than a thousand institutions from day schools to orphanages may have contributed to forced assimilation through education.22 Native children as young as three were taken from their families and enrolled in residential schools where they were forcibly renamed, reclothed in non-Native garments, forbidden from using their mother tongues, or observing any Native religious or cultural rite in order to convert the children to Christianity and make them ‘useful’ members of colonial society. Most notoriously, in 1892, General Richard Henry Pratt argued ‘all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.’23 Pratt established the Carlisle Institute in Pennsylvania in 1879 and presided over the school for twenty-four years. Under his leadership, the Institute enrolled 4,903 Native children from seventy-seven Native nations.24 For crusaders such as Pratt, the intentional and systematic destructiveness inherent in the teaching methods of residential schools was an essential precursor to Native survival.

Residential schools are now formally recognized as institutions of genocide in Canada and the United States. While campaigners for residential schools sincerely believed their motives were humanitarian, there is no doubting the fact that residential schools were deliberately designed to achieve cultural annihilation with profoundly disturbing consequences. In recent years, the hastily buried remains of thousands of Native children have been unearthed in unmarked graves across North America. The most recent finds began with the recovery of 215 children’s bodies interred in a mass grave on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, in May 2021. The bodies of a further 1,300 children were soon found across five sites in Canada. A year later, a preliminary United States government investigation found children buried at fifty-three former residential schools from a total of nearly five hundred sites.25 The continued use of the historic term ‘schools’ is increasingly recognized as a euphemism that profoundly understates the genocidal violence underpinning institutions whose survivors report horrific violations such as neglect, physical beatings, or abuse.26 While the formal recognition of residential schools as genocidal is important, the intergenerational consequences of such harrowing violence remain and demand redress.

Over the nineteenth century, the United States government and campaigners partly justified removal, reservations, and residential schools as essential strategies for tackling declining Native populations. In the later nineteenth century, Native nations experienced new forms of dispossession with the establishment of national parks. Yet, unlike previous policies, national parks were not justified by claiming that they would be of benefit to vanishing peoples or species, but as spectacular sites of national pride for the enjoyment of tourists. Nonetheless, national parks were quickly associated with debates about extinction on an international scale.

Pristine Parks

In the 1830s, the young Pennsylvanian artist George Catlin was so convinced of the imminent extinction of Native peoples that he dedicated himself to publicizing their plight.27 Born in 1796, he grew up listening to his grandfather’s ‘thrilling descriptions’ of the Battle of Wyoming in 1778, when the British and Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations allies, defeated local opponents during the Revolutionary War. His grandmother and seven-year-old mother were among several hundred prisoners captured during the battle, but later released unharmed. Later in life, Catlin recalled that they were treated ‘with the greatest kindness’, which he regarded as evidence for ‘the honour of the Indian’s character’.28 As a young man, Catlin established himself as a miniature portrait painter in Philadelphia, but moved to bustling New York for better opportunities in 1826. Three years later, he met the painter Charles Bird King, who made his name painting portraits of Native leaders. Within a year, Catlin decided to turn his hand to historical painting and took a steamboat up the Missouri River, starting from St Louis.

Catlin spent six years wandering the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains of North America. He made five treks west of the Mississippi in the summers from 1830 and 1836 and diligently painted the continent’s landscapes and peoples while collecting an enormous range of artefacts. Catlin hoped to make his mark, and fortune, by selling his collection of more than six hundred paintings to the American government as a record of the new republic’s vanishing nations. When that plan failed, he toured American, European, and British lecture circuits with his ‘Indian Gallery’. Catlin publicly exhibited his collection from 1833 onwards, inviting audiences across the United States, including in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, New Orleans, and New York, to hear about his travels. He exhibited his collection alongside Native performers passing through New York in 1837. When profits started to fall, he decided to take his Indian Gallery to London in 1840.

In London, Catlin initially performed wearing Native clothing, or hired Londoners as models-cum-mimics, but a chance encounter enabled him to exhibit his collection alongside travelling Native groups. In 1843 Catlin met the entrepreneur Arthur Rankin, who managed a troupe of Anishinaabe, a nation from the Great Lakes region in the United States, hoping to make money by exhibiting themselves in England. They performed in Manchester and London. At the shows, the group’s interpreter Alexander Cadotte, also of native heritage, met the eighteen-year-old English woman Sarah Haynes, and the couple soon married at a church crowded with curious onlookers.29 Rankin tried to capitalize on the marriage by publicizing the bride’s potential appearance in the shows. Infuriated, Cadotte quit the group and the couple departed for Walpole Island, in Ontario bordering Michigan, while Rankin toured Britain independently with the remainder of the group in 1844. In the same year, Catlin entered into a similar arrangement with a group of Báxoje, a Native nation from Iowa, managed by the missionary George Melody while they performed in New Jersey. Initially, the group performed across Britain, but also ventured to Paris in 1845, before they returned to the United States. A month later, Catlin entered into a third arrangement with another group of Báxoje, managed by a Christian convert named Maungwudaus, or George Henry. He was a government interpreter for a local mission on Walpole Island, southwestern Ontario, before assembling the group of his own people for exhibition abroad. They were exhibited in Paris and London where they also met Queen Victoria.

Catlin spent years regaling patrons with traveller’s tales and supplemented his exhibitions with published accounts of his travels, including Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians (1841) and Life Amongst the Indians: A Book for Youth (1861). London hosted many exhibitions of foreign peoples. Throughout the 1800s, performers from around the world enacted songs, dances, and rites of passage to showcase their cultures for British audiences keen to observe peoples not easily met in London’s already diverse streets. The shows featured men, women, and often children, either as individuals, small groups, or even families, frequently accompanied by a manager giving a lecture, or an interpreter, to facilitate encounters. In the later nineteenth century, displayed peoples were exhibited in much larger groups within world fairs, sometimes living on-site in ostensible ‘native villages’. Managers would often showcase warriors from colonial conflicts, presenting them as military foes, or as the last of their race. By exhibiting the Indian Gallery with Native performers, Catlin contributed to a well-established means of profiting from the general public’s curiosity about race, empire, and, increasingly, extinction.30

Catlin was so captivated by the Native nations he met that he imagined a future when they would be:

… preserved in their pristine beauty and wildness, in a magnificent park, where the world could see for ages to come, the native Indian in his classic attire, galloping with his wild horse, with sinewy bow, and shield and lance, amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes. What a beautiful and thrilling specimen for America to preserve and hold up to the view of her refined citizens and the world, in future ages! A nation’s Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature’s beauty!31

Catlin hoped that establishing a nation’s park would allow Native nations to continue using their lands in customary ways. His landscapes usually included Native individuals as a visual marker of pristine nature (Fig. 3.1). In contrast, by the mid-nineteenth century a new genre of landscape painting emerged in which wilderness was redefined as unpeopled nature. Thomas Moran’s Yellowstone Lake (1875, Fig. 3.2) is typical of painters who depicted Providence’s sublime power through wild landscapes.32 Catlin is often credited with inventing the notion of a national park, but his dream was markedly different to the eventual reality.

The expectation that Native peoples would soon be extinct contributed to the establishment of national parks. California established Yosemite as the first state park in 1864, and Yellowstone soon followed as the world’s first national park in 1872.33 Early campaigners routinely claimed that the parks were national monuments of unmatched splendour, but also agriculturally or commercially worthless. In the hopes of securing custom from future visitors to the parks, powerful corporations, such as railway companies, supported the movement.34 Notably, campaigners promoted national ownership ambiguous the Dawes Act was targeting shared Native ownership because it was regarded as uncivilized and a ‘heathen’ form of ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’.35 The crown jewels of American environmental heritage, national parks were consistently carved out from Native territories while perpetuating the notion of an unpeopled American wilderness.

3.1 George Catlin, Picturesque Bluffs above Prairie du Chien (1835–6).

3.2 Thomas Moran, Yellowstone Lake, c. 1875.

From the outset, national parks helped create a version of wilderness devoid of Native presence. Historians have traced how transferring Native territories into the ownership of the United States of America extinguished subsistence rights, such as for hunting or timber.36 For example, Yellowstone was regularly used by Crow, Shoshone, Nez Perce Bannock, Flathead, and Blackfeet nations; Yosemite (made a national park in 1890) was home to Miwok groups; Mesa Verde in Colorado, established as a national park in 1906, was associated with the Utes and Anasazi; Glacier National Park in Montana, established in 1910, was home to the Blackfeet; while the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which became a national park in 1919, was used by the Hopi and Navajo. Founding parks often involved coercive strategies. In Yosemite, Miwok villages were strategically razed to the ground while their former inhabitants starved or froze.37 Native nations who customarily used Yellowstone’s geysers to prepare food or for religious worship were systematically denied access.38 Suppression meant early tourists encountered Native presences as absent, minimal, or heavily stage-managed.39 Sometimes, Native peoples worked as tour guides or performed for the paying public, such as the Blackfeet at Glacier National Park. These acts reinforced the narrative of Native people as historic ghosts rather than as the presently dispossessed.40 By promoting a vision of wilderness in which Native use was either systematically denied, suppressed, or erased, the parks movement created a powerful legacy that still holds sway in conservationist circles. Yet, as environmental historians have consistently shown, this presents considerable problems for both historians and policy-makers. By effectively denying human intervention, use, and management of nature as legitimate or desirable, ‘wilderness’ depended on an unhelpful and unsustainable bind in which the ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ vied against each other in a zero-sum game.41

National parks were not established to protect vanishing species, but campaigners for national parks quicky incorporated conservationist rhetoric into their repertoire. Originally, campaigners insisted that parks must be emptied of people to allows tourists to enjoy the landscapes without fear.42 When Americans began to worry about the dwindling numbers of species such as the bison or grey wolves, campaigners shifted tactics to argue that the parks offered sanctuary for endangered species threatened by any human presence.43 Environmental concerns about vanishing species created new grounds for removing Native nations and changing customary land use in favour of federal management. Most obviously, officials insisted on Native expulsion because their practices of hunting and lighting fires were blamed for damaging the pristine nature of the American wilderness and possibly causing the extinction of flora and fauna. In 1886 park grounds received military protection, and in 1894 hunting was criminalized there.44 Protectionist activity systematically redefined customary uses of the land as ‘poaching’ or ‘criminal damage’ to enforce dispossession. Persistent resistance left many early conservationists clamouring to confine Native peoples to reservations.45 By the end of the century, as naturalists increasingly worried about dwindling species, Native nations were frequently dismissed as unfit custodians and ignorant destroyers of wilderness.

America’s national parks set precedents that were quickly copied worldwide as countries set up national parks, often on the homelands of Indigenous peoples including in Canada (1887), Australia (1879, 1891, and 1915), and New Zealand (1894). Using military personnel for park management, promoting untouched wilderness, and the development of both a national and international tourist trade, became common features across the world. Significant conservationist efforts in Africa led to the establishment of South Africa’s Kruger Park in 1926, and Tanzania’s Serengeti Park in 1940. Globally, the national parks movement entrenched forms of wilderness and conservation rooted in the denial and erasure of human use, historically or in the present, as well as widespread dispossession of Native peoples.46

Throughout the nineteenth century, presidents, legislators, and reformers partly justified removal, reservations, and residential schools by arguing that they would be for the benefit of Native nations on the verge of extinction. In doing so, campaigners both drew from, and contributed to, broader debates among naturalists about colonized peoples said to be on the verge of extinction while changing the broader meaning of extinction in the modern world.

Dying Races

The British government established the Parliamentary Committee on Aborigines (British Settlement) to explore the treatment of colonized Indigenous peoples (‘aborigines’ in the report) worldwide just after abolitionists helped secure new legislation to end enslavement across the British Empire in 1833.47 Thomas Fowell Buxton, one of the period’s leading abolitionists, called for a committee to investigate ‘what measures ought to be adopted with regard to the native inhabitants of countries where British settlements are made, and to the neighbouring tribes’ for their protection and to facilitate their conversion to Christianity.48 His lobbying was successful. First sitting in 1835, the committee’s work prompted the Quaker physician Thomas Hodgkin to found the Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) in 1836. The group pursued reform in the hope of establishing paternalist, humanitarian imperial rule across the British Empire. The APS merged with the abolitionists to form the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society in 1909, which, ultimately, was the forerunner of Anti-Slavery International.

The Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (1837) was a catalogue of harm, with recurrent claims about extinction shared and scrutinized. It gathered evidence from North America, South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Tasmania, the Pacific Islands, and South Africa, to assess the nature of British rule. The report noted that colonized peoples faced population declines across the British Empire, but forthrightly challenged fatalistic responses to such loss:

Not a few, even in the present day, are inclined to the belief, that in spite of all our efforts, the speedy extinction of the Aborigines is inevitable. Their extermination, it would seem, is an appointment of Heaven, and every attempt to avert their doom must, therefore, of necessity prove utterly unavailing. The atrocity of such a sentiment is only surpassed by its impiety. To imagine that there now exists a race of men devoted by Providence to destruction, is assuredly to libel the beneficent and merciful character of the Most High.49

It might be tempting to dismiss this religious fervour as reformist polemic, especially when even contemporaries dismissed such ‘philanthropy’. Charles Dickens beautifully captured the phrase’s pejorative implications in Bleak House (1852–3). In the novel, Mrs Jellyby ignored the impoverished wretchedness of her family as she tried to provide humanitarian assistance to people living on the banks of the River Niger. Dickens was adamant that such ‘philanthropy’ was unjust given extensive needs much closer to home. Nonetheless, the report provides important insights for the use of claims of extinction beyond the animal world.

Fatalistic discussions of colonized peoples were widespread within a few decades of new ideas about the ubiquity of animal extinction, and in less than a decade of the reported extinction of the Beothuk in Newfoundland. The refrain of dwindling populations caused by unchecked violence marked the report’s discussion of North America, South America, the Caribbean, New Holland (now Australia), Van Diemen’s land (now Tasmania), the Pacific Islands, and South Africa. The report began with North America and observed: ‘In the colony of Newfoundland it may therefore be stated that we have exterminated the natives.’50 In Upper Canada, colonized peoples were reportedly ‘melting away before the advance of the white population’. Only three lines discussed the West Indies, because ‘Of the Caribs … we need not speak, as of them little more remains than the tradition that they once existed.’ In New Holland only ‘devoted missionaries’ were considered enough to stop the ‘progress of extinction’.51 The report staunchly noted that culpability lay with the ‘guilty ambition and avarice of men professedly civilized and Christian’.52 This slippage between extermination and extinction gathered strength, especially within North America.

By the mid-nineteenth century, North American theorists touting Native extinction as an inevitable, even desirable by-product of colonization, faced criticism for their malign influence. The German anthropologist Theodor Waitz accused American theorists of creating an ‘American School’ promoting extinction as a process of ‘higher races’ displacing ‘lower races’ as ‘predestined by nature’. Originally published in Germany in 1859, and translated into English four years later, Waitz sarcastically observed:

… it would appear that we must not merely acknowledge the right of the white American to destroy the red man, but perhaps praise him that he has constituted himself the instrument of Providence in carrying out and promoting this law of destruction. The pious manslayer thus enjoys the consolation that he acts according to the laws of nature which govern the rise and extinction of races.53

His scathing attack on the conflation of extermination, extinction, and natural laws is revealing. Waitz held the Harvard zoologist and geologist Louis Agassiz, craniometrist Samuel Morton, and their followers responsible for a theory that ‘reconciles us both with Providence and the evil dispositions of man’, and flattering those lacking moral righteousness. Lest anyone misunderstand his antipathy, he noted that whereas some considered such a natural law evidence for ‘a specifically higher mental endowment of the white race’, such a position was ‘improbable’. In contrast, Waitz contended racial differences ‘essentially depended on the natural and social conditions’ in which races developed.54

Most nineteenth-century scholars of race believed humans were descended from Adam and Eve, and that racial, cultural, and social differences developed as Noah’s sons migrated across the world from the moored Ark. As each son’s descendants peopled Europe, Asia, and Africa, they encountered different environments which caused new complexions and other racialized differences. Scholars affirming the ‘original equality of races’, even if later modified by environment, asserted humanity’s unity and faith in God’s Creation, without implying the racial equality of present-day usage. Waitz’s forceful criticism suggests how the notion of providentially doomed races was challenged, dismissed, and even ridiculed within the nineteenth century by those who felt European settlers were expediently, hastily, and falsely claiming moral superiority, or racial advantage.

Despite opposition, extermination was routinely conflated with extinction within the sciences. Like museum relics, some colonized peoples were assumed to be merely historic, and fast-fading, remnants of their nations.55 A year after the Anthropological Society of London was founded in 1863, the anthropologist Richard Lee presented a paper to the Fellows about ‘The Extinction of Races’. He contended:

The rapid disappearance of aboriginal tribes before the advance of civilisation is one of the many remarkable incidents of the present age. In every new country, from America to New Zealand, from Freemantle to Honolulu, it is observable, and seems to be a necessary result of an approximation of different races, peculiar, however, in degree, at least, to this portion of the world’s history. It has been estimated that the Hawaiians have been reduced as much as eighty-five per cent during the last hundred years. The natives of Tasmania are almost, if not quite, extinct. The Maories are passing away at the rate of about twenty-five per cent every fourteen years, and in Australia, as in America, whole tribes have disappeared before the advance of the white man.56

Lee characterized extinction as an inevitable feature of global human contact in the same breath as he noted its roots in modern settler colonial expansion. He interpreted observable trends, such as dwindling Indigenous populations, as the ‘necessary’ consequence of interracial contact leading to endangerment, and, ultimately, extinction. Repeated discussions of dying races like this reframed colonial expansion and settler colonial histories as evidence for a more general natural law, and, implicitly, the will of God. Lee’s confidence is typical of nineteenth-century commentators who used species extinction to narrate the history of British imperialism. His chilling list of colonial casualties reveals how quickly dispossession and extermination were disavowed and reframed as a ‘necessary result’ of imperial encounters subject to the natural law of species extinction.

At the same meeting, a paper ‘On the Extinction of Races’ was presented by the anthropologist Thomas Bendyshe, known for translating the anthropological treatise of the famous eighteenth-century naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Bendyshe condemned his peers for their ‘unphilosophical haste’ in presuming human extinctions were ‘the will of Providence’. The charge might seem innocuous, but it was a serious accusation. Since the seventeenth century, natural philosophers creating scientific knowledge were expected to honour gentlemanly codes of behaviour to distinguish themselves from common artisans, engineers, or labourers. To dismiss a scholar’s experiments or investigations as ‘unphilosophical’ questioned the integrity of his experimental method, scholarly principles, and gentlemanly honour. These considerations persisted into the nineteenth century when Bendyshe issued his warning.

Bendyshe conceded that many colonized populations were declining in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, but he was alarmed by the assumption that extinction would necessarily follow. He observed that ‘theories of various kinds have been started to account for what has never yet taken place, at least in a sufficient number of instances to determine whether it is an exceptional or a strictly natural phenomenon’. His distinction between ‘exceptional’ and ‘natural’ evoked the contrast between artificial human intervention and God-given laws. Bendyshe insisted that endangerment or extinction only occurred if colonizers encountered populations already in decline and predicted recovery when favourable conditions re-emerged.57 His caution was a direct challenge to the fatalistic assumptions about colonized peoples’ futures. The opposition between Lee and Bendyshe confirms that even when nineteenth-century commentators wrote papers with virtually the same titles and agreed that colonized peoples were declining, they might disagree about the cause and significance. While some scholars deduced that declining populations provided evidence of a more general natural law of extinction equally applicable to animals and humans, others were far more cautious about inferring abstract laws from the available evidence. Such caution recognized that establishing natural laws from empirical data was fraught with philosophical and theological complications because they were not just descriptions of natural phenomena, but might potentially be interpreted as indications of Providential will.

The tendency to frame imperial encounters as evidence of a natural law of extinction strengthened when combined with new theories of human evolution in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Darwin famously put forward his theory of evolution through natural selection in his most famous book On the Origin of Species (1859). Despite outlining animal and plant evolution extensively, he remained famously tight-lipped about our evolutionary past, only hinting in the final pages that in the ‘distant future … Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history’. This intimation immediately ignited combative debates on humanity’s place in nature.58 In a well-known twist of fate, natural selection was independently formulated by the naturalist and specimen collector Alfred Russel Wallace. Unlike Darwin, Wallace exempted humans from experiencing natural selection. For him, the ‘true grandeur and dignity of man’ allowed our species to rise above a natural law that governed ‘all other organic beings’. Nonetheless, he maintained:

It is the same great law of ‘the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life ’, which leads to the inevitable extinction of all those low and mentally undeveloped populations with which Europeans come in contact. The red Indian in North America, and in Brazil; the Tasmanian, Australian and New Zealander in the southern hemisphere, die out, not from any one special cause, but from the inevitable effects of an unequal mental and physical struggle.59

Moreover, he likened such extinctions to the process that enabled ‘the weeds of Europe’ to ‘overrun North America and Australia, extinguishing native productions … by the greater capacity for existence and multiplication’.60 Given that Wallace explicitly excluded humanity from selection pressures, this passage is a remarkable instance of how colonial violence was reframed as extinction. By describing colonists as vigorous weeds naturally overrunning local flora and peoples, Wallace claimed greater fecundity for imperial whiteness and doomed others to annihilation.

Twelve years later, Darwin finally revealed his own views in his book The Descent of Man (1871), with significant consequences for debates about extinction and empire. Equating ‘civilisation’ with European imperial expansion, Darwin observed that ‘Relics of extinct or forgotten tribes have been discovered throughout the civilised regions of the earth, on the wild plains of America, and on the isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean.’ He went on: ‘Civilised nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations, excepting where the climate opposes a deadly barrier.’61 Darwin concluded: ‘Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, and race with race.’ Crucially, he imagined intercultural encounters as interracial competitions ‘settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption’.62 In Darwinian terms, cultural and social differences determined who would live or die out, whether as individuals, nations, or, ultimately, races. His only concession for ostensibly weaker peoples lay in the competitive advantages of a ‘deadly climate’.63 In arguing so, Darwin conceptualized extinction as an evolutionary pressure driving human evolution and history. The extinction of colonized peoples was predicted long before Darwin committed these words to paper, but they suggest how even the most prominent writers of the age conflated extermination and extinction.

In Darwin’s wake, many readers interpreted life’s history, including human evolution and modern European colonization, as the extinction of primitive forms supplanted by not just better adapted, but ostensibly more evolved, beings. When combined with notions of progressive development, survival turned into a badge of political, cultural and moral advancement. In this vein, scientists, anthropologists and colonial officials reframed colonial conflicts as intercultural competition subject to natural selection and a form of progressive human development. This politics of progress perpetuated the conflation of extinction and extermination, especially when combined with these new evolutionary ideas, and underpinned fatalistic readings of imperial history as an epic saga in which colonial powers subdued ostensibly weaker races in a vicious struggle for survival. The loss of individuals considered the last of their race, such as Shanawdithit of the Beothuk, fuelled European convictions that many peoples were vanishing or genuinely extinct into the present. In 1924, Nature published an editorial about the ‘Primitive Races within the British Empire’ which confidently asserted: ‘Throughout the world, whenever a primitive race is brought into contact with European civilisation, the result is normally, though not invariably, for the inferior race to lose its vitality and to die out.’64 The wording is remarkably close to Darwin’s nearly five decades earlier, but the historical claim is much older and rooted in the violent encounters in settler colonies that were interpreted as scientific evidence for extinction by men like Lee, Wallace, and Darwin. Even more disturbing than naturalists and colonizers framing the past or present in these terms were their attempts to predict the future of colonized peoples as one of certain extinction.

The treatment of many colonized peoples is now regarded as genocidal. The Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin first defined genocide during the Holocaust, and in the wake of the attempted extermination of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917, and of the Ova Herero and Nama by German colonists in German South West Africa, now Namibia, between 1904 and 1908. Lemkin amassed historical evidence of mass killings over centuries of European colonization, trying to name the ‘crime of crimes’ after forty-nine members of his own family were murdered for being Jewish. Lemkin coined the word ‘genocide’ in 1942, from the Greek word ‘genos’, meaning a people, and the Latin suffix ‘-cide’ for the act of killing.65 He fought for the recognition of genocide as an international crime, and achieved his ambition remarkably quickly when the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.

Lemkin distinguished genocide from mass killing and other kinds of persecution because it targeted peoples on the basis of their collective identity. He regarded attacking collectives as robbing humanity of shared enrichment because ‘Our whole cultural heritage is a product of the contributions of all peoples.’ Without every unique contribution, humanity’s cultural inheritance suffered irretrievable loss. Lemkin defined genocide as a ‘coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life’ of racial, ethnic, religious, national, and political groups.66 His focus on these groups survives in the convention’s definition of genocide as the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. Despite attempts to amend the law and include more groups, such as those based on gender, sexuality, and political beliefs, the original restrictions remain.

Lemkin regarded cultural destruction, biological eradication, and physical killing as genocidal. Despite his broad-ranging definition, genocide is often misunderstood, or more narrowly defined, as primarily, or solely, mass murder. This ambiguity is partly due to the compromises Lemkin made when trying to shepherd the proposed legislation through the United Nations. The final wording of the convention recognizes the following acts as genocidal: ‘killing members of the group’, ‘causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group’, ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’, ‘imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group’, and ‘forcibly transferring children of the group to another group’.67 This wording retained genocidal strategies rooted in biological extermination or mass killing, but jettisoned cultural destruction except for the forcible transfer of children. The differences between Lemkin’s original conception and the United Nations definition has created considerable tension and ambiguity over what constitutes genocide in the past or present. Controversies over whether specific mass killings constitute genocide often revolve around establishing the ‘intent to destroy’. Specific intent, or dolus specialis in legal terms, is notoriously difficult to prove, making successful prosecution on this basis a rarity. Lawyers and political scientists increasingly favour defining, and inferring, intent more broadly. For example, prosecutors might require establishing specific intent only for the architects of genocidal schemes, while perpetrators could be prosecuted on the basis of knowing the purpose of their killing even if they did not plan the extermination. Interpreting intent more broadly would certainly help bring more people to trial, potentially secure more convictions, and bring prosecutions in line with historical practice.

Parsing intent is useful and essential for prosecutions. However, even when not possible or consensus is lacking, we must acknowledge that mass killings, enslavement, starvation, conflict, and new diseases are well-documented features of modern European colonialism. Whether or not these horrors meet the limited definition of genocide established in international law or broader alternatives such as crimes against humanity, arguments about intent should never overshadow the indisputable violence we know was unleashed, and whose legacies still demand acknowledgement, a reckoning, and apology over denial.

Catlin’s shows promoted expectations about vanishing nations in a transatlantic context. After his death in 1872, the Smithsonian Institution finally purchased his collection in 1879. By this time, Catlin’s paintings were viewed not as a record of decline, but of lost ways of life. Politicians, naturalists, and anthropologists justified government policies of removing Native peoples from their lands, confining them on reservations, and excluding them from national parks. Whether Native extinction was explicitly anticipated, or implicitly planned for, removal deprived Native nations of their rightful homelands, hunting grounds, and natural resources. The establishment of North American national parks created a new strategy for state-sanctioned dispossession that was quickly adopted by conservationists worldwide. National parks in the United States remained under non-Native leadership for over a century until Charles ‘Chuck’ Sams III was appointed to the directorship of the National Parks Service in 2021. As the first Native person to hold the title, he took up the position hoping to incorporate Native views and knowledge into park management.68

Using a newly established language of lost species to discuss human futures is an often overlooked, but important, shift for understanding the unnatural and entangled histories of empire and extinction. Once extinction was regarded as a natural law, predictions about doomed races grew across North America. In this guise, extinction was entwined with narratives of the rise and fall of civilizations in which white, European colonists and new settler states won the spoils.69 Only by tracing how writers conflated extermination with extinction, and used histories of settler colonialism as evidence for a broadly applicable natural law of extinction, can we appreciate the full significance of new scientific understandings of extinction while challenging the ongoing dispossession they made possible.

There were good reasons to be alarmed. A recent team of scientists, led by the geographer Alexander Koch, tried to quantify the environmental impact of Europeans arriving in the Americas. The team’s scientific paper estimated pre-Colombian populations across the Americas numbered around 60 million in 1492, compared to a European population of about 70 to 88 million. The paper estimates that the violent changes caused by European colonization of the Americas, from new diseases to mass killing, had caused the deaths of 56 million people by the 1600s, constituting 90 per cent of the pre-Colombian population and a tenth of the global population. With this ‘Great Dying’, previously farmed lands grew wild, and absorbed so much carbon from the atmosphere that the average global temperature dropped by 0.15°C contributing to a minor ice age.70 These numbers and scenarios are one attempt among many to quantify the astonishing violence recorded in the archives of the new American republic.

The genocidal violence was astonishing, and must not be underestimated, or disavowed as simply characteristic of past attitudes. Throughout the nineteenth century, fatalistic claims about colonized peoples’ futures were challenged: even when they were the claims of a minority, it is important to note that this is not the preserve of modern-day sensibilities. However, claims about total extinction should be treated with much greater caution, while claims about genocide need to be better understood. Many nations are left battling the assumption that genocide requires total, or near total, annihilation, when there is no ambiguity in Lemkin’s original formulation or international law that genocide can be ‘in whole, or in part’. Ultimately, despite the most alarming prophecies, Native peoples survived as sovereign nations. Perpetuating myths about their extinction represents a refusal to acknowledge and respect Native forms of defining, and knowing, who they are.71 In 2017 a dramatic example of these battles culminated in the recognition that the Sinixt First Nation were not extinct. They had been declared extinct by the Canadian government in Canada in 1956 after the death of a Sinixt woman named Annie Joseph. The legal acknowledgement of their survival was only secured after decades of campaigning.72 Denying people the possibility of knowing they exist is a profound form of epistemic injustice. Rather than enabling such injustice, historians of extinction might facilitate its end.

In the mid-nineteenth century, ideas about human extinction and evolution were transformed by the discovery of human fossils and a new consensus about our ancient origins. Scholars interested in race, extinction, and imperial encounters found novel evidence to fuel their intellectual interests. Suddenly, lost Neanderthals held the key to understanding our past, present, and future.

4.

Humans Before Humans

In June 1840, London’s impresarios billed the exhibition of an ‘Antediluvian Child’ as the first human fossil ever found. Dug up outside Brussels and shown in Leicester Square, its promotional materials invited anyone interested in humanity’s origins to come and see the evidence for themselves (Fig. 4.1). Newspaper advertisements confidently announced the child fossil disproved anyone inclined to ‘pretend that, previous to the Deluge, the human race had no existence’. Visitors needed to make haste as the fossil was due to be exhibited before the esteemed men of the Academy of Science in Paris within a fortnight. The entry fee of a pound was extraordinarily high compared to many other summer attractions: a shilling gained entry to a concert at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, an exhibition of daguerreotypes, or George Catlin’s paintings of the Native nations and landscapes of the Rocky Mountains at the Egyptian Hall.

The Antediluvian Child’s fame even reached the Antipodes.1 William Buckland, twice president of the Geological Society, visited the exhibit with two other men, but was distinctly unimpressed. He dismissed the fossil as ‘nothing but concretion of chert in the Brussels sand, something like the head and trunk of a child without legs’.2 He clearly felt let down, and perhaps even hoaxed. Nevertheless he parted, perhaps even gambled, with such a hefty entrance fee because the exhibition coincided with vigorous debates about our ancient past.

Deciding how to identify, date, and interpret human fossils vexed nineteenth-century geologists. How old were our earliest ancestors? Had humans existed for just a few thousand years as most believed, or did humanity originate in prehistoric times? Despite identifying many extinct beasts, Georges Cuvier died eight years before the Antediluvian Child’s exhibition, convinced that human fossils had never been found. Geologists knew of many evidently old human bones, but they were wary of defining them as fossils because this implied a startlingly ancient origin. The caution was important for a period when any suggestion that prehistoric people existed was deeply controversial owing to the tricky questions it raised about Biblically calibrated historical timescales. In the mid-nineteenth century, geologists’ hammers finally unearthed indisputably ancient human relics, but that did not settle disputes about their meaning. Accepting that ancient humans existed required building a new consensus about how best to date and interpret these strange new remains and artefacts. As scientists debated the peopling of lost worlds, they also tackled troubling new questions. Were ancient humans the same species as modern peoples, or had they died out? Had modern peoples killed off their ancient kin? Did past human extinctions presage more to come? Exploring these questions helped reimagine what it meant to be human, and raised the worrying prospect of both ancient and future human extinctions.

4.1 Handbill for the exhibition of the ‘Human Fossil’. Reproduced by permission of the Geological Society of London

Naming Wise Men

Who counts as human? Philosophers, theologians, and scientists have all proffered answers trying to make sense of our origins, descent, antiquity, and evolution, but we only acquired our scientific name, Homo sapiens, in the eighteenth century. In Biblical accounts of Creation, Adam named every living thing before Eve drew breath (Genesis 2:19). Adam’s achievement depended on knowing the true essence of living beings, and their relationships to each other. In European traditions, naturalists hoping to know, name, and order living beings faced having to search for a natural system of classification reflecting Adam’s order, or accepting artificial systems that provided only imperfect substitutes. Before the mid-eighteenth century, European naturalists named species using a genus and long form of contextual information that allowed experts to distinguish between natural kinds. New discoveries or reclassification entailed updating the contextual evidence to keep names distinctive.

The Swedish botanist and physician Carl Linnaeus proposed two-part names consisting of a genus and species to provide unique references that remained stable and accessible even to ordinary people. His most important works were Systema Naturae, or general system of nature, first published in 1735, and Philosophia Botanica, first appearing in 1751. He continually revised his general system, which led to the original twelve pages swelling to a three-volume twelfth edition of more than 2,400 pages within his own lifetime, and further editions after his death. He introduced two-part names in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae in 1758. Although he was derided as a ‘second Adam’, plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, and cultivated varieties are still formally named using the Linnaean system.3

By naming Homo sapiens, Linnaeus defined the limits of humanity. He was especially interested in distinguishing between the Anthropomorpha, who he subdivided into Homo, or humans; apes and monkeys, or Simia; and Bradypus, or sloths. Initially, he defined Homo sapiens as the sole human species. Derived from the Latin ‘homō’ for ‘human being’ and ‘sapiēns’ meaning ‘wise’, he further subdivided the species into four continental varieties: Americanus (American), Africanus (African), Asiaticus (Asian), and Europaeus (European). The tenth edition of 1758 outlined the natural history of the Monstrosi, or monstrous variety, to classify unusual types whether occurring naturally or artificially. He named Homo troglodytes by drawing on stories about apes, folk legends about feral people, and medical interest in Amelia Newsham, a young Jamaican girl born to enslaved parents, whose albinism intrigued many scholars in eighteenth-century Britain.4 By the 1760s, in writings specifically addressing Anthropomorpha, Linnaeus also contrasted Homo sapiens and Homo ferus, a wild man who never gained wisdom, with Homo caudatus, a new species named from travellers’ tales across the Malay world (Fig. 4.2).5 The Linnaean system was widely used to classify living beings within a few decades of publication, but despite being the archetypical ‘wise man’, Linnaeus invited considerable ire by naming multiple human species.

4.2 The Anthropomorpha, as defined by Carl Linnaeus.

In the eighteenth century, most European naturalists assumed humans were one family, or species, descended from Adam and Eve, later known as monogenesis. While respecting the notion of original unity, many scholars subdivided humans into groups called ‘varieties’ or ‘races’ depending on the author. Most favoured cleaving humanity into three distinct varieties, namely the ‘European’, the ‘Mongolian’, and the ‘Ethiopian’. However, the exact number varied: the eighteenth-century comparative anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach favoured five varieties, adding the ‘Malayan’ and ‘American’, while the London surgeon John Hunter argued for seven. More rarely, some scholars proposed the existence of humans before Adam, multiple acts of Creation, or numerous groups of survivors following the mooring of Noah’s ark, to make sense of observed differences between nations. Isaac de la Peyrère’s Prae-Adamitae (Pre-Adamites) suggested as early as 1655 that a human race had existed before Adam’s creation; however, this remained an alarmingly profane, and marginal, view.6 Contradicting the Biblical account of a single act of Creation, shared descent through Adam and Eve, and a single point of migration from Noah’s Ark, was a theologically and scientifically risky endeavour – and therefore remained disreputable. Later called ‘polygenists’, the most vocal dissenters argued ‘race’ was a fixed character impervious to environment, education, or evolution, and that human races were inherently different species. These extreme views gained ground from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, but they remained in the minority.7 Ultimately, the Linnaean legacy included the adoption of two-part names and classifying humans as Homo sapiens, but did not extend to convincing naturalists there was more than a single species of Homo.

Defining humanity as a single family required scholars interested in human variety to trace historic migrations from Noah’s Ark, and the subsequent peopling of the world, to piece together our common past. Most theologians believed Noah’s Ark moored on Mount Ararat in the Caucasus mountains of Asia after the waters receded, hence the term Caucasian. When Noah’s sons journeyed to different regions of the world, each begat the peoples of the world: Japheth and his seven sons wandered across Europe and Asia, Ham and his four sons migrated to Southwest Asia and Africa, while Shem and his five sons journeyed to the Middle East.8 The calibration of history using strict Biblical timeframes limited human history to literate societies and the age of the earth to about 6,000 years old. The Celts’ arrival in Europe was dated to mere centuries before Julius Caesar’s expeditions to the British Isles in 55 and 54 BCE expanded the Romans’ known world, while Emperor Claudius’s invasion from 43 CE led to occupation, conquest, and the start of the Iron Age in Britain.9 By the mid-nineteenth century, geologists proposed that the slow pace of geological change required much more time than assumed. As geologists reimagined earth’s history as a gradually unfolding saga, its past expanded from a few thousand years to unknown millennia. With new timescales for life on earth and lengthening lists of extinct species, writers wondered whether extinct beasts and people had coexisted in lost worlds.10

Petrified People

Roman histories of invading and conquering Britain referred to Britons as barbarus, Latin for a ‘foreigner’ or ‘savage’: in spite of this reputation, nineteenth-century Europeans imagined their ancestors as relatively civilized and skilled metalworkers over the previous two millennia. This self-regard was partially overturned by the reinterpretation of ceraunia, or thunderstones. Highly prized by collectors, ceraunia were originally regarded as the petrified remains of thunderbolts. By the mid-eighteenth century, antiquarians believed they were primitive stone tools made by the earliest Europeans who once lived in a far less exalted, even shockingly lowly, state. Soon, the earliest Europeans were reimagined as barbarous intruders from Asia.11

Despite these new histories of European savagery, petrified human bones were regarded with profound caution in the 1820s. Almost two decades before Buckland visited the Antediluvian Child, he found a skeleton dusted in red ochre in Paviland Cave in South Wales in 1823. The fragments included a partial left arm, left leg and foot, partial right foot, several ribs, and the pelvis. Buckland initially suspected a male skeleton, but later described his find as a long-dead witch and, eventually, as the Red Lady of Paviland. While not a literalist interpreter of theological texts, Buckland’s geological theories were compatible with relatively short Biblical chronologies and occasional catastrophes such as floods. Buckland contended that the Red Lady was a Roman burial even though her bones were found with much older lost beasts.12 The geologist Paul Tournal found human remains and pottery intermixed with extinct animal bones in Languedoc, Southern France, in 1827. He published a paper insisting that the people and beasts lived together. Two years later, the well-known excavator Jules de Christol found cave floors scattered with the bones of humans and extinct animal bones near Sommières in France. He reasoned that if geologists admitted the animal bones were fossils, then this must also be true of the human remains. Tournal and Christol published papers challenging Cuvier’s insistence that human fossils did not exist, but he remained unconvinced. Cuvier did not rule out the possibility of human fossils, but he doubted whether any of the known finds were truly ancient. Hesitant geologists continued interpreting apparently ancient human bones with the utmost caution.13

New finds cumulatively strengthened the case for human antiquity, but scholars remained wary. In 1829 the prehistorian Philippe-Charles Schmerling found two human skulls embedded under a thick cluster of rocks speckled with extinct animals in Engis near Liège in Belgium. The knapped flints and animal bones worked into tools and ornaments convinced him that the skulls belonged to people who had lived among the extinct beasts. Now named Engis 1 and Engis 2, Schmerling’s finds attracted enormous interest, partly because of his medical education and his personal excavation of an undisturbed site. Despite his credibility, notable geologists still surmised a later burial for the skulls. The amateur geologist Boucher de Perthes found a thick, blackened fragment of a human jawbone alongside numerous flints in the gravel pits of Abbeville, France, in 1838. He confidently proclaimed the reality of human antiquity, but geologists shrugged off his enthusiasm claiming insufficient evidence.14

Geologists and antiquarians expanded the chronology of European history into prehistory even without the formal recognition of human fossils in the 1830s. Dutch and Scandinavian scholars extended human history into three prehistoric ages: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The Three Age system was first developed by C. J. Thomsen, curator of the antiquarian collections at the National Museum of Denmark around 1807. Antiquarians knew that stone, bronze and iron artefacts appeared in repetitive sequence in barrows, mounds, and digs across Europe.15 Thomsen’s system allowed antiquarians to establish the relative date of artefacts. even when absolute ages were impossible to establish. The term ‘prehistory’ (forhistorisk in Danish) was first used by Christian Molbech in 1833 in a series of lectures published the following year. The curator of the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Daniel Wilson, introduced the term prehistory to English speakers in The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland (1851).16 By the mid-nineteenth century, geologists and antiquarians regarded early Europeans as uncivilized and primitive with histories stretching back a few millennia. This expanded the chronology of European history into prehistory, while Homo sapiens remained a singular species.

In August 1856 men quarrying limestone found peculiar bones outside Feldhofer cave, near Düsseldorf in the Neander Valley, Germany. Previously undisturbed for millennia, the shattered remnants were discarded by the workers who continued their task. The site’s owner Friedrich Wilhelm Pieper rescued the curiously thick and heavy bones that survived their disposal, including a partial skull cap. Assuming they were the bones of an extinct cave bear, he asked a local teacher and amateur natural historian, Johann Karl Fuhlrott, for help identifying the species. On closer inspection, Fuhlrott suggested they were of a person who once roamed Europe’s ancient crags and rivers. Seeking a second opinion, he sent a cast of the skull’s remains to Herrmann Schaaffhausen, a professor at the University of Bonn, who asked to examine the original remains. The professor was especially puzzled by the skull’s distinctive thickset, continuous brow-ridge. He compared the skull to other skulls in local anatomy collections. None matched. He licked the bones and his tongue stuck. Modern bones were not sticky so the ‘tongue test’ suggested the bones were fossilized. Had the professor tasted the first human fossil ever found? Despite the tantalizing possibility, sticky tongues are suggestive, not decisive. On 4 February 1857 the professor reported his findings to the Lower Rhine Medical and Natural History Society in Bonn. Almost exactly four months later, both men presented a report on the discovery and condition of the bones to Bonn’s scientific men.17

Two years later, the excavation of an undisturbed cave in Britain radically changed the meaning of the Neander Valley’s mysterious and long-dead resident. News of an undisturbed site at Brixham cave in Devon reached the amateur geologist William Pengelly in 1858. Excited by the pristine site, Pengelly informed members of the Geological Society of London, who formed a committee to supervise the excavation. The cave’s floor was marked with a grid and layers of rock were slowly peeled back. Months of painstaking digging generated hundreds of animal bones and, crucially, seven flint tools unquestionably made by people. Several factors convinced geologists that the flint tools were conclusive proof of human antiquity. A pristine site helped defend against potential criticisms of tampering or later occupation by modern peoples. The innovative grid system ensured the dig was exceptionally well documented. Pengelly’s foresight in alerting the geologists of London ensured metropolitan interest in directing, and authenticating, the finds. When the results were reported, the scholarly credentials of gentlemanly geologists helped verify the flint tools as genuine.18 The combination of practical methods and elite validation were essential to widespread interest in the cave’s significance.

The geologist Charles Lyell visited the cave and later used his presidential address to the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in September 1859 to make his views public: ‘No subject has lately excited more curiosity and general interest among geologists and the public than the question of the antiquity of the human race.’ Despite numerous suggestive finds, he noted the ‘extreme reluctance’ to ‘admit the validity of such evidence’. After all, many sites endured floods and multiple occupations making the evidence difficult to interpret. Nonetheless, Lyell vouched for the empirical reliability of the Brixham flints and declared they ‘imply a remote antiquity for the human fossil remains, and make it probable that man was old enough to have coexisted, at least, with the Siberian mammoth’.19 Sceptics remained, but Lyell’s address marked an important new consensus that our past receded into unknown millennia. The address also promised his audience that a great work twenty years in the making would soon solve another great mystery about life on earth.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published by the respectable press of John Murray in November 1859. Many naturalists of the time believed species were immutable natural kinds based on the assumption that God’s Creation was perfect from the outset. As early as 1844, Darwin admitted that he no longer believed species were fixed to his botanist friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, who later became the Director of Kew Gardens. Darwin described it as ‘like confessing a murder’.20 As he privately worried over the nature of species, the anonymous publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844 sparked intense controversy for arguing that life on earth developed from cosmologically humble beginnings to our world. Reviewers issued vicious denunciations for contradicting the Biblical account of Creation and fretted about society at large, because they associated such godlessness with the gutter press and the bloodiest horrors of the French Revolution where naturalists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck suggested that new species developed through ancestors passing on useful acquired characteristics.21 British fears that revolutionary political violence might spread like contagion from Europe to Britain ensured that radical ideas such as species change were simply not respectable subjects for legitimate scientific inquiry, or discussion. In a magisterial history of the reception of Vestiges, the historian James A. Secord suggests that anonymity made it impossible to dismiss Vestiges as a hack job unworthy of any consideration. The book rapidly became a bestseller and previously hushed conversations bloomed into open debates.22 Even more fearful of public censure, Darwin privately amassed evidence until he rushed to publication.

The Origin of Species hinted that in the future ‘Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history’: these twelve words triggered immediate, often vitriolic, speculation about our origins. The heretical implication that humans and apes might share a common ancestor suggested a much lowlier origin than being created in God’s ‘own image’ as noted in verse 27 of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Despite Darwin’s deliberate reticence on human origins, many readers were immediately alert to, and horrified by, the implication that humans were descended from apes, with moral inclinations rooted in bestial instincts. Cartoonists mocked Darwin and his advocates by filling the Victorian press with caricatures of monkey ancestors, or tracing bizarre evolutionary lineages. Darwin was not the first to suggest that species changed or that apes and humans might share ancestry, but several factors made his intervention significant. Just as anonymity protected the author of Vestiges, so Darwin’s gentlemanly standing, reputation as a gifted naturalist among London’s scientific elite, and prestigious publisher ensured his ideas were not summarily dismissed. The startling new prospect of an evolutionary natural history for humans stimulated the search for human fossils as well as the ‘missing link’ between apes and humans, while Darwin finally addressed human evolution in The Descent of Man in 1871.23

Meanwhile, the identity of the newly named Neanderthal Man remained a mystery. Lyell visited the Neander Valley in 1860, licked the bones to find his tongue stuck, and carried home a cast of the skull. The cast circulated among London’s gentlemanly elite and was carefully pored over by the surgeon George Busk, Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons. Busk translated sections of Schaaffhausen’s original article from German and added extensive commentary in 1861. Busk suspected the remains were of great antiquity from their stickiness and fine dendritic marks he had only observed in fossilized cave bears, horses, and woolly mammoths.24 Busk was fascinated by the Neanderthal skull’s form, which he interpreted as ‘the most savage primitive type of the human race’.25 He lamented that ‘no portions of the facial bones, whose confirmation is so decisive’ were preserved’.26 He took measurements and compared them to other skulls, including published measurements for the skulls of at least two African men, an African woman, individuals from Malaysia and India, and skulls from Italy, Iceland, Norway, and Ireland. Busk failed to find a close match in the ‘museums of the College of Surgeons in London, the Jardin des Plantes Paris, of the universities of Göttingen, Berlin, and Bonn’.27 He concluded that the skull belonged to a ‘barbarous and savage race’.28

Busk’s frustration with an incomplete skull indicated his inability to take standardized anthropological measurements. Craniometrists reduced skulls to numerical data to help make comparisons and create hierarchies using cranial capacity, facial angle, and cephalic index. Cranial capacity, defined as the volume of the brain case, was used to make racialized claims about intelligence based on the twinned assumptions that the measurement was an adequate measure of brain size, and that brain size was directly correlated to intelligence.29 The facial angle was defined as the angle between a vertical line drawn following the slope of the brow intersecting with a horizontal line drawn from the base of the nostril to the ear. Invented by the physician Petrus Camper to catalogue human proportions in the 1770s, anatomists, anthropologists, and artists quickly used the facial angle to make broader claims about beauty and intelligence. They compared the facial angles of apes, colonized peoples, and Europeans to depict an order that they believed reflected ascending degrees of intelligence and beauty (Fig. 4.3). While apes were presumed to be the lowest and ugliest forms, colonized peoples were depicted as intermediaries, and Europeans classified as the epitome of beauty and intelligence as represented by the Roman sculpture of Apollo Belvedere, whose facial angle was close to 45 degrees.30 The Swedish professor of anatomy Anders Retzius defined the cephalic index as the ratio produced by dividing the skull’s width by its length, and used it to classify skulls into three types: oval, long and narrow, or broad and short.31 Whether used alone, or in combination, craniometrists used cranial capacity, facial angle, and the cephalic index to create racist hierarchies with Europeans at the top, other peoples in the middle, and apes as the lowliest of all. Busk’s desire to make these measurements on the Neanderthal skull was an empirical and political urge to incorporate the mysterious person into an existing racialized hierarchy of human worth.

4.3 A human hierarchy constructed using the facial angle from ape to Apollo.

In the first few weeks after their finding, the Neanderthal bones were said to be unlike any living peoples, but within a few years they were routinely likened to living colonized peoples. Thomas Henry Huxley, an anatomist and staunch defender of Darwin’s new evolutionary theories, examined the Neanderthal skull cast procured by Lyell and worried over by Busk. Huxley wrote about the skull in his essay collection on Man’s Place in Nature (1863). He assured readers that the skull’s ‘extraordinary form’ was ‘not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races’ (Fig. 4.4).32 He confirmed the bones were fossils, but emphatically refuted they were a ‘missing link’ between apes and humans. He compared the Neanderthal cast to four skulls identified only by their origin: an African man, an Aboriginal man from Western Port in Australia, a Mongolian skull held at the Royal College of Surgeons, and an unidentified skull in his own possession from a Constantinople cemetery. He illustrated his essay with a figure comparing the Neanderthal cast to the Aboriginal Australian man, contending that a ‘small additional amount of flattening and lengthening, with a corresponding increase of the supraciliary ridge, would convert the Australian braincase into a form identical with that of the aberrant fossil’. Huxley admitted that without the Neanderthal jaw ‘any judgement on the relations of the fossil skulls to recent Races must be accepted with a certain reservation’.33 Despite the qualification, Huxley’s implication that Aboriginal peoples were living fossils from the Stone Age dominated nineteenth-century debates about human antiquity and laid the foundations of profoundly racist stereotypes that linger to this day.

4.4 Huxley’s drawing of the Neanderthal skull cast.

Neanderthals were finally given a species name in 1864. In an almost throwaway remark buried in a footnote, the geologist and keen fossil collector William King proposed Homo neanderthalensis as a suitable recognition of the first widely accepted new member of the genus since Linnaeus invented Homo. King concluded that the Neanderthal was ‘not only specifically but generically distinct from Man’ by comparing the Neanderthal skull cast to the Andaman islanders.34 King regarded them as ‘next to brute benightedness’, yet he reasoned, even they had skulls akin to ‘the highest intellectual races’.35 King’s comparisons with living peoples he considered as lowly as possible reveals how debates about Neanderthal humanity were utterly dependent on racialized discussions about who counted as a human or animal, and the assumed spectrum from uncivilized to civilized, in the nineteenth century. Such comparisons strengthened King’s conviction that ‘the Neanderthal skull is eminently simial’ and so ‘I feel myself constrained to believe that the thoughts and desires which once dwelt within it never soared beyond that of the brute’.36

In the same year that Homo neanderthalensis was formally named a species in its own right, a skull from Gibraltar captivated London’s scientific elite. Dug up in Forbes’ quarry by Lieutenant Edmund Flint, the skull was presented to the Gibraltar Scientific Society in 1848.37 The skull reached London in unclear circumstances, but was quickly examined and compared to the Neanderthal by George Busk. Gratified, he declared it ‘of infinitely higher value than the much-disputed [German] relic’ because it retained ‘nearly the entire face including the upper jaw with most of the much and curiously worn teeth’. Busk finally calculated the facial angle and cephalic index for a fossilized human skull. Using these measurements, he concluded that the Gibraltar skull confirmed that the Neanderthal remains were not ‘a mere individual peculiarity’ but probably a ‘race extending from the Rhine to the Pillars of Hercules’. The geographical range contradicted one naturalist’s view that the bones were merely a diseased and wounded horseman taking refuge after fighting in the Russian army against the French in the Napoleonic wars. Busk delighted in clarifying that a grave so far west made it impossible to believe ‘a rickety Cossack engaged in the campaign of 1814 had crept into a sealed fissure in the Rock of Gibraltar’. 38 Now known as Gibraltar 1, it was considered the first Neanderthal found until Schmerling’s find of Engis 2 was reclassified as a Neanderthal child in 1936. Gibraltar 1 remains the first adult Neanderthal unearthed.39 In 1886 two nearly complete Neanderthal skeletons were found at Griotte de Spy, Belgium, finally ending speculation on whether they were a new human species.40

The debate about who counted as human existed long before our ancient ancestors were found, but it took on new dimensions as nineteenth-century diggers and sifters exposed our fragmented, petrified kin. Geologists, antiquarians, anthropologists, and archaeologists all formulated new theories and methods to make sense of these unique puzzles throughout the nineteenth century.41 Crucially, scholars compared Neanderthal remains to other skulls in their substantial collections from peoples all over the world, ensuring ancient humans were quickly incorporated into a global, and highly racialized, story about humanity’s origins. As Lubbock wrote: ‘Not only throughout Europe – not only in Italy and Greece – but even in the so-called cradle of civilisation itself, in Palestine, and Syria, in Egypt, and in India, the traces of a stone age have been discovered.’42 The disagreement over Neanderthal taxonomy also revolved around the special status of human beings. As the Anthropological Review argued: ‘Man, in his pride, is so much in the habit of considering himself as the last link, as the epitome of the vegetable and animal world, in short as the lord of the creation, that he conceives it beneath his dignity to appear on the scene until everything has been duly prepared for his reception.’43 Human antiquity challenged ideas of superiority rooted in Biblical theologies about Adam being created by God in His own image and with dominion over the earth, but this was not due to an inherent conflict between science and theology. Instead, many geologists and theologians created new narratives about human evolutionary progress.

Debates about human antiquity overlapped with much older ideas about political, social, cultural and moral worth. In the most basic terms, eighteenth-century scholars used a four-stage model of human development. The lowliest societies were believed to be nomadic hunter-gatherers, followed by pastoralists with domesticated animals. Next were the agriculturalists whose farming of crops allowed them to settle down. Establishing commerce and permanent settlement was regarded as the highest stage of human civilization. Scholars interested in human classification used a broad range of factors, such as geography, religion, clothing, means of subsistence, and complexion, to distinguish between human varieties and pinpoint stages of development to define ‘race’ and ‘civilization’. This allowed ‘race’ to function as an elastic category defined by a broad variety of cultural, environmental, and physical factors.44

Histories of racial thought often associate the 1860s with the overthrowing of older elastic and developmental difference in favour of theories proposing innate physiological, anatomical, or biological differences between humans. The proposed shift is attributed to many factors, including debates over enslavement, the diminishing importance of environmental ideas about human difference, and the emergence of a new scientific racism exemplified by polygenesis.45 However, human antiquity allowed scholars arguing over whether humans were a single species, or many, to strengthen their cases. Both factions needed vast tranches of time to explain the development of variation from a single origin or, more controversially, the emergence of multiple human species. Far from disappearing, stadial and developmental classifications persisted well into the late nineteenth century, especially when combined with ideas about social evolution. A narrative of progressive civilization, with some peoples achieving greater advances than others, still resonated with many. As such, the mid-nineteenth century saw a substantial proliferation, not simplification, of theories of human difference, because older classifications did not disappear but competed with newer ways of cleaving humanity into distinct kinds: whether of a single descent or many; savage, barbarous, or civilized; and ancient or modern.

The Ascent of Extinction

Amid debates about the meaning of human difference, geologists popularized the new consensus on human antiquity throughout the 1860s. Charles Lyell’s Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863) discussed the lives of ancient humans alongside the emergence of Europeans. The book shifted the debate from whether men walked among mammoths to when they first met.46 Two years later, John Lubbock’s Pre-Historic Times (1865) summarized the latest geological research and introduced new epochs of human history. A baronet, banker, and devoted carer for a pet wasp now preserved in the British Museum, Lubbock was an important member of London’s scientific elite who further subdivided the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age.47 He proposed four great epochs: the ‘Palaeolithic’ Stone Age when ancient humans lived alongside cave bears and woolly mammoths; the ‘Neolithic’, or ‘polished Stone Age’, when human metalwork was limited to gold; the Bronze Age when humans used the metal for armaments and implements; and, finally, the Iron Age in which bronze was primarily ornamental and iron used more widely.48 Lubbock’s division of the Stone Age into the Palaeolithic and Neolithic extended, consolidated, and refined the use of the Three Age classification in Britain. When Darwin finally addressed our ancient past in the 1870s, he was keenly aware that vast new timescales made human evolution plausible. As he noted, the ‘high antiquity of man has recently been demonstrated … this is the indispensable basis for understanding his origin. I shall, therefore, take this conclusion for granted.’49

Prehistory captivated scholars exploring humanity’s pasts, but the lack of written sources and rarity of artefacts made reconstructing the lives of our ancestors near impossible for historians who depended upon methods rooted in the study of literate societies. The historian Francis Palgrave evocatively captured the scale of the challenge:

You can no more judge of their age than the eye can estimate the height of the clouds: the shapeless masses impart but one lesson, the impossibility of recovering by induction any knowledge of the speechless past. Waste not your oil. Give it up, that speechless past; whether fact or chronology, doctrine or mythology; whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or America; at Thebes or Palenque, on Lycian shore or Salisbury Plain: lost is lost; gone is gone forever.50

An expert on Normandy and England, Palgrave’s dour advice proclaimed writing prehistory universally futile, providing a dizzying sense of the expansion of historical time from a few millennia of written sources to time immemorial, and the new challenges facing anyone interested in studying our ancient past.51

Geologists soon proposed that ethnographic observations offered solutions to archaeological hindrances. Alert to the empirical paucity of knapped stone or fossilized bones, Lubbock proposed using modern colonized peoples as living proxies of ancient human society. Since early Europeans lived in uncivilized states, Lubbock reasoned that peoples in similar states of arrested development around the world might facilitate comparisons. Lubbock regarded his comparative method as an essential tool: ‘if we wish to clearly understand the antiquities of Europe, we must compare them with the rude implements and weapons still, or until lately, used by savage races in other parts of the world’.52 His book’s title made the archaeological equivalence explicit: Pre-Historic Times: As Illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (1865). Lubbock’s global aspirations were evident in chapters devoted to ‘Savages’ and discussing the Khoisan, Indians, Andaman Islanders, Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal Tasmanians, Fijians, Māori, Tahitians, Inuit, Native nations of America, and peoples of Paraguay and Patagonia.53 While Lubbock, and his contemporaries, almost always referred to specific groups when providing examples, this was usually in the service of much broader categories such as ‘savage’ and ‘civilized’.

Lubbock assembled evidence from ‘merchants, philosophers, naval men, and missionaries alike’ to provide ‘almost universal testimony’ about colonized peoples.54 His list of authorities is revealing. Merchants, missionaries, and mariners were on a par with philosophers precisely because scholars valued in situ knowledge provided by people living, trading, and labouring within colonies and along global shipping routes. Ethnographic observations flowed along the same paths as people and commodities, making scientific knowledge dependent on imperial infrastructure. The comparative method was not a panacea and could reveal unexpected relationships, but it remained a significant way of understanding human prehistory and made the lives of modern colonized peoples into the foundations of nineteenth-century comparative prehistoric archaeology.55

Ancient human disappearances were regarded as a consequence of migration, conquest, and extermination, but extinction also became an explanatory tool in the mid-nineteenth century.56 Discussing human antiquity in the Anthropological Review, one writer suspected that ‘Premature as the inference may be … the conclusion is not altogether unfounded that the original races were inferior to the succeeding immigrants, and also that the primitive race is now extinct in Europe, and has shared the fate of the gigantic animals with which it was contemporaneous.’57 In these discussions, ancient peoples were believed to have replaced, and probably exterminated, ostensibly inferior races as they migrated across the world. Lubbock regarded Stone Age and Bronze Age Danish archaeological remains as so distinctive that the latter might have ‘been introduced by a new race of men ’ who ‘rapidly exterminated the previous inhabitants … and were all together in a much higher state of civilisation’.58 In the 1870s, the French anthropologist Paul Broca argued that Neanderthals only survived as a people until ‘another stronger and more perfect race’ supplanted the former after ‘having nearly exterminated it’.59 The conflation of extermination and extinction continued in the 1880s as the archaeologist William Boyd Dawkins conjectured that Palaeolithic peoples encountering Neolithic invaders found ‘there were the same feelings between them as existed in Hearne’s times between the Eskimos and the Red Indian, terror and defenceless hatred being, on the one side, met by ruthless extermination on the other’.60 Dawkins blended evidence of ancient and modern violence to explain why prehistoric humans were ‘gradually driven from Europe, without leaving any mark on the succeeding peoples in blood, manners or customs’.61 Prehistorians effectively recast ancient human exterminations as extinctions while justifying their conflation as evidence of a timeless suspicion of migrants.

Nineteenth-century beliefs that colonized peoples were Stone Age relics were reflected in the museums of the day. Augustus Henry Lane Fox, later Pitt Rivers, is best remembered for his founding bequest to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, established in 1884 within twenty-five years of the discovery of ancient flint tools at Brixham Cave in Devon.62 He used his inherited wealth to build an extensive personal collection of ethnographic artefacts, archaeological finds, and European folk art, some of which he excavated personally while holidaying in Europe, Egypt, and North America. Keen to display his treasures to best effect, Pitt Rivers invented a system based on sequences of types to show evolutionary change. Crucially, he intended his typological system to exhibit progressive human development:

The resemblance between the arts of modern savages and those of primeval man may be compared to that existing between recent and extinct species of animals. As we find amongst existing animals, species akin to what geology teaches us were primitive species, and as among existing species we find the representatives of successive stages of geological species, so amongst the arts of existing savages we find forms which, being adapted to a low condition of culture, have survived from the earliest times, and also the representatives of many successive stages through which development has taken place in times past.63

Pitt Rivers’ bequest made his collection, and the evolutionary assumptions underlying it, publicly available for decades, perpetuating interpretations of colonized peoples as lowly vestiges of ancient pasts.

The image of Neanderthals as unintelligent brutes was transformed later in the twentieth century. The remarkably complete skeleton of the Old Man of La Chapelle in central France was dug up in 1908. Found in a limestone cave floor among extinct rhinoceros, reindeer, bison, and hyena, the Old Man appeared to have been deliberately buried. Convinced of the skeleton’s importance, the excavators donated it to the National Museum of Palaeontology in Paris.64 The French palaeontologist Marcellin Boule reconstructed the skeleton and penned an unflattering article conjecturing that Neanderthals walked on two feet, in a hunchbacked, ape-like posture: ‘Neanderthal Man must have possessed only a rudimentary psychic nature, superior certainly to that of the anthropoid apes, but markedly inferior to that of any modern race whatever. He had doubtless only the most rudimentary articulate language.’65 Reports in Nature marvelled at the find and compared the Old Man to the peoples of both Australia and Africa. The stooped, inhuman brute that Boule imagined dominated ideas about Neanderthals for decades.66

The discovery of Neanderthal children excited twentieth-century prehistorians and archaeologists. In 1915 the archaeologist H. Martin dug up the skull of a young girl, now believed to have been around seven or eight years old, in the La Quina rock shelter of the Charente in western France. Eleven years later, the English archaeologist Dorothy Garrod excavated the Devil’s Tower, Gibraltar, close to where Gibraltar 1 was discovered. Using dynamite to blow apart the layers of rock, Garrod and her team recovered fragments of a boy’s skull so young that he still had milk teeth.67 A writer for the Science News-Letter could hardly disguise their surprising news with the headline ‘WOMAN FINDS NEW CAVE MAN SKULL AT GIBRALTAR’.68 The omission of Garrod’s name is indicative of the historic exclusion of women from both scientific research and histories of science. Garrod’s career is remarkable beyond her discovery of the young boy. Thirteen years later, she was the first woman elected to a professorship at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford, marking an important milestone for the achingly slow inclusion of women within academia and scientific research, particularly at ancient universities and elite learned societies. The child’s skull is known as Gibraltar 2 and believed to have been about three years old at the time of death, providing important evidence of Neanderthal childhood.

Between the two World Wars, significant discoveries of human fossils in Asia and Africa radically transformed reconstructions of human prehistory while scientists still longed to find the missing link between apes and humans.69 Australopithecus africanus was first excavated in Taung, northwest South Africa, in 1925. Indonesian expeditions yielded fossils named Pithecanthropus between 1929 and 1937. A skull found in a Chinese cave was eventually named Sinanthropus and widely reported in the press as ‘Peking Man’ in 1929. Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus attracted much greater interest than Australopithecus, partly because scientists expected to find ancestral fossil humans in Asia owing to much older ideas about our origins rooted in the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark mooring in the Caucasus mountains. After the Second World War, attention switched to Africa when numerous fossils were unearthed, including Homo habilis in 1960. These finds vastly expanded the human family tree and created new interpretative possibilities for understanding our relationship to Neanderthals. Africa was reimagined as humanity’s cradle and palaeoanthropologists reconstructed new patterns of global migration from that continent.

Amid the reorientation of our origins, the stereotype of Neanderthals as slouching, inhuman brutes was challenged.70 The anthropologist William Straus and anatomist Alexander Cave visited the Old Man at the Museé de l’Homme (Museum of Man) in Paris in July 1955. They concluded that Boule had misinterpreted the deformations of an elderly, arthritic skeleton as typical of a healthy Neanderthal. Boule knew that some of the vertebrae were diseased, but Cave and Straus felt he had underestimated the extent of the pathology. Moreover, Boule pieced together an unusually straight spine in stark contrast to the naturally curved spine of modern humans. For Cave and Straus these problems rendered Boule’s assertions of a stooped gait and brutish ape-like appearance invalid. Famously, they quipped that if a Neanderthal man was ‘reincarnated and placed in a New York subway – provided that he were bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern clothing – it is doubtful whether he would attract any more attention than some of its other denizens’.71 Straus and Cave were among the earliest scientists to transform our understanding of Neanderthals.

Stereotypes of ancient humans as grunting brutes are common in popular culture, but modern scientists regard Neanderthals as complex, adaptable, and intelligent kin.72 They are now believed to have been adept hunters who crafted efficient hunting weapons, such as spears, and killed large animals such as aurochs, bison, horses, reindeers, and seals, while trying to outwit predatory hyenas.73 They also harvested plants and seafood, including cockles, limpets, crabs, mussels, and oysters along the shore of the Mediterranean and the coasts of the Atlantic and Africa.74 Specialists have interpreted figurative hand prints believed to be over 66,000 years old as evidence that Neanderthals consciously created and appreciated art, in addition to the belief that they might also have used body art and ornaments, from feathers to paint and clothes.75

The nature of Neanderthal extinction remains unclear. Ranging across Europe and Asia, Neanderthals appear in the fossil record from around 450,000 years ago and disappear about 40,000 years ago. As early as the 1940s, the geneticist and evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky suggested that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred.76 Discussing fossil remains from Palestine, he noted that the distinctive population ‘arose … as a result of hybridization of a Neanderthaloid and a modern type, these types having been formed earlier in different geographical regions’.77 In 1998 a team found the well-preserved skeleton of a four-year-old Neanderthal boy in the limestone cliffs of the Lagar Velho rock shelter, Portugal. They dated his burial to between 28,000 and 30,000 years ago and argued the boy’s features were a ‘mosaic’ of Neanderthal and modern humans. They interpreted this as evidence that the boy descended from populations with substantial intermixing for millennia.78 The team also interpreted the burial site as indicating that the last Neanderthals took refuge in Iberia, probably Gibraltar, before their extinction.79

Neanderthals may no longer survive as a kind, but their DNA may linger in many of us. The Neanderthal genome was sequenced by a team based in Leipzig, Germany, in 2010.80 They began with twenty-one fossilized Neanderthal bones from Croatia, whittled the collection down to three individuals from which they extracted nine samples of Neanderthal DNA, and compared these larger samples to smaller fragments from three other Neanderthal sites, including the original remains from Neander Valley in Germany. They also compared the Neanderthal DNA to that of chimpanzees and five modern humans, including ‘one San from Southern Africa, one Yoruba from West Africa, one Papua New Guinean, one Han Chinese, and one French from Western Europe’.81 The team inferred that Neanderthals and modern humans diverged between 270,000 and 440,000 years ago while modern humans inherited between 1 per cent and 4 per cent of their genes from Neanderthals. They also concluded that all modern Eurasians, but only some Africans, share genes with Neanderthals.82 More recent studies argue that modern humans arrived in Europe 45,000 years ago and overlapped with Neanderthals for at least five thousand years, allowing considerable time for intermixing.83 Within a year of the Neanderthal genome’s reconstructions, commercial ancestry testing gave customers the chance to ‘Find Your Inner Neanderthal’ and, more recently, to ‘Celebrate your Ancient DNA’.84 Whether we choose to redefine our reflections, blood, or genes as our ‘inner Neanderthal’ or not, we remain as captivated by our ancient ancestors as did the people who first encountered our petrified kin.

Naming Neanderthals a distinct species radically changed naturalists’ sense of human uniqueness. The exact form of humanity’s family tree remains heavily disputed, but there are currently thirteen species within the genus Homo, and more might be added as new fossils are found.85 Nineteenth-century writers were horrified that the hideous cranium from the Neander Valley might be anything more than a diseased or deformed oddity. From Sunday schools to learned societies, people scrabbled for answers to troubling questions raised by the prospect of human fossils. Were humans placed on earth by God, or did they share a common ancestor with apes? When did humans first take their place among the beasts? Had some humans died out? If so, how? What was the best way to understand the society and culture of the first humans? From the 1860s onwards, intense debates yielded a consensus that our ancient ancestors had once roamed lost worlds and there were many more ways of being human than previously imagined. Historical and scientific interest in evolution tends to overshadow the importance of the almost parallel debates on human antiquity, but questions about our origins were just as important as those about race, descent, or evolution.86

When the first scholars pored over the bones from Neander Valley, they drew on nineteenth-century ideas about race and development to interpret Neanderthals as hideous, apish brutes. They also drew direct comparisons with living peoples routinely vilified as lowly or inferior across Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Modern palaeoanthropologists have abandoned the language of ‘savages’, but they still use living peoples as proxies of ancient human behaviour, echoing the nineteenth-century logic that hunter-gatherers represent early stages of human development.87 Recognizing the origins of these racialized, and often racist, claims about who counts as human and how developed they might be is essential to unravelling the legacies of older ideas about extinction. Our fascination and desire to understand our kin may be harmless, but early debates about what it means to be human have left more disturbing legacies.

The possibility that ancient human extinctions were harbingers of modern colonial encounters created disturbing prophecies and comparisons. Writers such as Lubbock and Dawkins, when considering human antiquity and extinction, inferred that a broader pattern of extinction governed human encounters throughout our existence. These comparisons laid the foundations of racist stereotypes that some peoples, particularly in Australia or the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, were Stone Age relics in arrested states of development. In Australia, early colonists partly rationalized Aboriginal dispossession through claims that British emigrants were merely replacing peoples who were doomed to extinction.88

In the late nineteenth century a young Irish woman read about the prophesied doom of Aboriginal peoples. Stirred by their plight, she set sail for Australia where she preached the creed of extinction to her dying breath.

5.

Daisy’s Dying Legacy

Daisy Bates eagerly unwrapped copies of her first published book a few weeks after her seventy-ninth birthday, during a period convalescing in an Adelaide hospital.1 Sent straight from its London printing press, the book’s publication in 1938 marked the culmination of her lifetime’s labour – and a narrow escape from oblivion. The plane carrying her manuscript from Australia to London had crashed into the sea en route. Luckily, the mail had been rescued and the manuscript sent on to her publisher John Murray.2 The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent Among the Natives of Australia recounted over forty years that Bates spent camping in the Australian desert, devoted to her ‘self-imposed task’ of ‘making the passing easy’ for a dying race.3 The book included stories of her frequent encounters with individuals she described as the last of their kind.4

Bates earned a peculiar fame as the ‘Great White Queen of the Never Never’: a white woman, dressed in Edwardian fashion, living in the desert. The writer Darcy Niland reminisced:

The most interesting person I’ve met in my wanderings around Australia was a woman from the Stone Age who wore a stiff starched white collar, and a black skirt which swept the desert dust. She spoke the barbaric tongue of the most primitive, most neglected people in the world – and she wore on her forehead a little frizzy fringe, just like Queen Alexandria. This was Mrs Daisy Bates … 5

Bates was widely praised as a humanitarian and appointed a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1934. Her fame endures in Australia, but she is largely forgotten in histories of anthropology or extinction despite perpetuating and popularizing the notion of dying races in the twentieth century. Yet, in recent years, Bates’s meditations on Aboriginal extinction have finally yielded an unexpected legacy that she would never have dreamed possible.

Invasion

The ancient land mass of Sahul comprised the land masses now known as Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. Palaeoanthropologists regard the peopling of Sahul as essential for unravelling our ancient past, especially our ancestors’ migration out of Africa. The exact timing, route, and number of entry points are heavily disputed. Archaeologists have repeatedly revised their estimates for the Aboriginal occupation of Australia: dates of 10,000 years ago were common in the 1950s, but jumped to 20,000 years by the mid-1960s, to 30,000 years by the end of the 1960s, and even further to 40,000 years by the early 1970s. The most recent estimate stands at 65,000 years ago in an article published in Nature in 2017.6 Despite this long-running dispute, often conducted with little regard for Aboriginal peoples’ own histories of their presence, we know that the peopling of Country led to an extraordinarily dynamic flourishing of cultural complexity, trade, language, and art. As peoples radiated across the continent, they spoke of their own becoming using at least 250 known language groups, including 800 dialects.7

Aboriginal peoples first encountered Europeans and Southeast Asians in the seventeenth century. The Dutch United East India Company (VOC, or Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) was founded in 1602, two years after the English East India Company. The VOC was central to Dutch trade across Southeast Asia, and the crews of VOC ships were the first Europeans to anchor and come ashore on the continent now called Australia in 1606 as they tried to find new trading opportunities. The Dutch surveyed the north and west coasts, while the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman voyaged to the continent in 1642 and 1644, naming it New Holland on his second trip. Within a few years more local connections were forged. The port city of Makassar lies on the island of Sulawesi, in present-day Indonesia. Between 1650 and 1750, Makassans visited the northern coast of the continent in praus, or boats, to catch trepang, or sea-cucumbers, as prized foods and medicines in home markets. Their initial forays turned into seasonal stays, sometimes lasting a few months, but the Makassans remained on the coast, and never tried to settle permanently, or impose their customs on the local peoples. The English explorer William Dampier reached New Holland in 1688 and 1699 and wrote in profoundly negative terms about the people he met there in his book A New Voyage Around the World (1697). The Dutch, and Dampier, kidnapped locals to serve as guides or interlocutors, leading to Aboriginal peoples facing violence and guns remarkably early in encounters with outsiders.8

Exploration, and colonization, followed from the eighteenth century onwards. British naval officer Captain James Cook’s three Pacific voyages aboard the ship Endeavour in 1768, 1770, and 1779, accompanied by the botanist Joseph Banks, are among the most famous of the twenty European voyages in the late eighteenth century. While Cook’s first voyage reached Tahiti, he also made landfall in New Holland. Cook had expected a warm welcome and new opportunities for trade, but he and Banks noticed local people shying away from any approach. Two local men spotted Cook, but warily tried to stop him landing. Cook shot, and hurt, one of the men, and named the place Botany Bay. The crew moved on to the far north coast, where they exchanged items with the residents. As he sailed away from the east coast, Cook stopped at an island, declared himself its first discoverer, named it Possession Island, and claimed the land in the name of King George III.9 Cook’s voyages were essential for expanding British knowledge of the continent, especially for charting the Pacific, collecting natural history specimens, and making ethnographic observations about Aboriginal peoples (Fig. 5.1).

Cook argued that the continent was essentially empty, making it ideal for colonization. The historical Aboriginal population is immensely difficult to quantify as many early records did not include Aboriginal peoples, or used changing categories of who counted as Aboriginal. This makes any early figures deeply problematic and unreliable. In recent years, population scientists have tried to mathematically model the historical population based on known archaeological sites.10 Estimates range from a few hundred thousand to the low millions. No matter how well informed these studies are, any speculation about historic numbers requires great caution. Even without exact figures, we know that early European explorers believed the continent was so sparsely populated that it was effectively Terra Nullius, or empty land, and regarded Aboriginal peoples as wandering ‘nomads’ lacking self-government and meaningful ties to the land. These views were rooted in a profound misunderstanding of Aboriginal seasonal occupation, social structures, and belonging to country. Ultimately, European assumptions about empty lands underpinned the rapid dispossession of Aboriginal peoples.

5.1 Drawings of Australian fauna and flora from the voyages of Joseph Banks. Australia: above, a kangaroo; below, a common ringtail possum.

The first British fleet arrived in Botany Bay in 1788 to found a settlement at Sydney Cove, with another following on Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) in 1803. Official records indicate that 4,100 men and women had arrived in New South Wales by 1796, swelling to 7,014 by 1802, and 33,543 by 1820.11 The British government hoped penal colonies would rehabilitate convicts transported from Britain into productive farmers tilling empty, but fertile, soils. The unceded coast proved far less suitable for growing European crops than colonial officials hoped, and settlement encroached further inland fuelled by the transportation of 27,000 convicts between 1788 and 1822, and rising to 160,000 by 1868. Sydney was established as an important port that connected the Australian continent to India, China, the United States, and the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa by the early 1800s.12

From 1803 onwards, Europeans who arrived in the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, renamed Tasmania in 1856, subjected islanders to horrific state-sanctioned violence. By the early 1820s, escapees and colonists spoke of a ‘Black war’ against Aboriginal peoples, whom they hunted and murdered with impunity. Estimates of the Aboriginal population before European contact are necessarily speculative, with figures ranging from four to fifteen thousand. Government records provide a chilling record of decline. By the 1830s, the colonial government removed a few hundred Aboriginal peoples to reservations: by 1847 only forty-seven known survivors remained and all of them had passed away by the 1870s. Notoriously, in 1869 William Lanney, widely perceived as the last Tasmanian man, and in 1876 Trukanini, considered the last Tasmanian woman, passed away. Their deaths were widely reported as the complete extinction of their people, forcing surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians to refute claims of their extinction.13

The scale and breadth of the everyday violence underpinning these claims of extinction has recently been revealed in an extraordinary project led by the late historian Lyndall Ryan. Defining frontier massacres as the deliberate killing of six or more people, the project created a map pinpointing Australian frontier massacres across the continent between 1788 and 1930. By late 2024 the map showed 438 massacres, with more than 10,000 people killed. Of this total, 419 were massacres by colonists of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. The map also shows a broadly consistent number of frontier massacres from the 1820s to the 1890s, with a peak in Tasmania in the 1820s, and a peak across the continent in the 1840s. Even this partial archive provides important evidence for the violence underpinning claims of extinction in the nineteenth century.14

A rising tide of outsiders and frontier violence led to calls for the greater protection of Aboriginal peoples by the 1830s. One of the most important British parliamentary reports published in 1836 noted: ‘In the formation of these settlements it does not appear that the territorial rights of the natives were considered, and very little care has since been taken to protect them from the violence or the contamination of the dregs of our countrymen.’15 This searing reproach blamed the ‘dregs’, or former convicts, as a lawless class for committing violent outrages, and ignoring the ‘territorial rights’ of Aboriginal peoples in the rush to seize land. These accusations clearly betray some class snobbery towards the convicts, but they also openly refer to the pre-existing territorial rights of Aboriginal peoples as a factor that was either carelessly disregarded or even deliberately violated with the arrival of the British. The language of ‘territorial rights’ is an important indication that people in the nineteenth century, even supporters of imperial rule, were sometimes critical of such dispossession across Australia. The report suggested a policy shift from neglecting frontier violence to establishing paternalistic humanitarian protection. The British government tried to establish protectorates for Aboriginal peoples in the wake of the report, but widespread settler opposition to them as unwarranted metropolitan intervention led to their abolition in the later 1840s. By the mid-nineteenth century, colonial officials, former convicts, entrepreneurs, and swelling numbers of emigrants from Europe, especially those seeking gold or escaping catastrophes such as the Irish Famine (1842–52), formed a settler society that further encroached on Aboriginal lands. By the mid-nineteenth century, expectations of Aboriginal extinction were so rife that colonists freely spoke of the impossibility of Aboriginal assimilation and of their necessary disappearance in due course.16

Forging Miss Daisy

Daisy Bates was born in Ireland on 16 October 1859 at a time of rapid colonial expansion in Australia. Her parents named her Margaret Dwyer, but she later adopted the name Daisy and only referred to Margaret as if speaking of a sister. She emigrated to England in 1881 and Australia in 1882.17 In Australia, Daisy O’Dwyer introduced herself as a twenty-year-old Anglo-Irish Protestant, rather than a twenty-three-year-old Catholic with an affected O’ added to her surname. She worked as a governess before marrying Edwin Murrant on 13 March 1884, even though he was two years shy of the legal age of consent of twenty-one. The pair never formally divorced, but the marriage withered, and he later travelled to South Africa. She moved to Sydney and married a second time, to a man named Jack Bates, on 17 February 1885. While Jack went roving in Queensland, Daisy remained in Sydney and married another man named Ernest Clarke Bagelhole. For unknown reasons, she quickly returned to Jack and never disclosed her bigamy. She gave birth to her only child, Arnold Hamilton Bates, in 1886 within a year of her return. The marriage survived eight years, but disintegrated as Daisy left Jack and sent Arnold to boarding school. Her son occasionally saw her, but died estranged from his mother. Daisy eventually returned to England where she met the journalist W. T. Stead, perhaps best known for publicly campaigning against the use of children in the sex trade and in support of raising the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen in the 1880s, and dying with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.18 Stead trained Bates as a journalist and hired her as a writer. Little more is known of her life until the end of the century.

Daisy Bates returned to Australia on an urgent, self-imposed mission in 1899. She spent more than forty years visiting and researching Aboriginal peoples, often living in the desert, writing for Australian newspapers, and corresponding with numerous amateur ethnographers. Initially working with varying degrees of governmental support and later at her own expense, she travelled across Western Australia (Fig. 5.2). She visited Rottnest Island prison and went on to the Beagle Bay mission in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia. She ventured to Broome and Roebuck Plains, the Maamba Reserve outside Perth with peoples of the southwestern districts, the northwest of the state including Bernier and Dorre Islands. She later moved to southern Australia where she spent time at Eucla, Fowlers Bay, Wirilya lying west of Fowlers Bay, Ooldea Soak, and finally Adelaide where she spent her last days.19

Bates prioritized learning Aboriginal languages, conducted her own fieldwork, and described her developing proficiency as the process of teaching herself the ‘A.B.C. of Anthropology in what I consider was the best way’. She quickly developed her identity as a researcher with unrivalled access to Aboriginal knowledge through linguistic expertise and familiarity with Aboriginal ‘go-betweens’.20 Bates regarded her intensive fieldwork as authoritative experience giving her the freedom to correct the mistakes of others. Between 1904 and 1912 she collected vocabularies from Western Australian Aboriginal peoples supported by a commission from Malcolm Fraser, the Registrar-General for Western Australia.21 She regarded existing vocabularies as ‘each contradictory of the other in essentials’ (original emphasis). Convinced that ‘a faithful record’ was only possible by going into ‘the Field myself’, she marshalled her research into a three-volume manuscript.22 The founder and honorary secretary of the Queensland branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, James Park Thomson, complimented her commitment to the task:

5.2 A map of Australia highlighting the places where Daisy Bates conducted her research.

One has to muster up a good deal of courage in undertaking any kind of literary compilation … but when we find a lady who is brave enough to sit down in cold blood and tackle the compilation of a work so essentially technical in character as the History and Vocabulary of the W. A. Abo[rigines] then it seems to me that we have reached the highest stage of human intellectual development.23

Thomson’s almost comical astonishment shows a keen appreciation of the research and betrays the pitfalls faced by women interested in conducting fieldwork. The Australian government declined the expense of publishing Bates’s findings and her efforts languished until posthumous publication as The Native Tribes of Western Australia in 1985.24

When asked why Bates chose her life in the desert, she recalled reading about the appalling mistreatment of Aboriginal peoples in The Times early in the twentieth century.25 The London newspaper published a series of letters in spring 1904 disputing whether white settlers were deliberately trying to exterminate Aboriginal peoples. An early campaigner for Aboriginal rights, Walter Malcolmson, wrote to the paper on 8 April 1904 charging that Aboriginal peoples ‘have almost been civilized out of existence’. He believed local systems of indenture left Aboriginal peoples ‘worse off’ than formerly enslaved Africans in North America. He supported his claim with horrific examples of beating, starvation, and policing.26 Malcolmson provoked the fury of several writers who categorically denied his claims about enslavement and broader patterns of settler violence. The pastoralist and politician, Henry Bruce Lefroy, denied ever witnessing ill-treatment while tending to his sheep station and alleged: ‘The aboriginals of Australia are admitted to be one of the lowest types of humanity. To the higher influence of civilization they have proved unamenable … Hence their extinction.’27 Lefroy’s palpable repugnance exemplifies broader, and long-standing, attitudes. A flurry of responses followed, challenging Malcolmson’s comparisons with America, and Lefroy’s denial, as well as the presumed extinction.28 Bates contributed to the debate with a characteristically trenchant defence of the British government. She claimed ‘equal authority to that of Mr. Malcolmson’ rooted in making ‘the native question a special study’. She dismissed Malcolmson’s letter as ‘ridiculous’, insisting that ‘the natives prefer to be indentured’.29 Bates carefully used living in the desert as a credential for challenging men, and consistently downplayed any demand for Aboriginal rights by arguing only imperial rule offered suitable protection. Her utter disdain for Aboriginal self-government is transparent. She also claimed The Times commissioned her to investigate the abuse further, although proof of the appointment has eluded all her biographers. State concern about how best to manage the situation led to a Royal Commission and report on the ‘Condition of the Natives’ published in 1905.30

Bates’s self-reliance and regard for her own research frequently appears in her personal papers. In 1910 she joined the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition in Australia led by Alfred Reginald Brown, who later added his mother’s maiden name to become Radcliffe-Brown, and which included the zoologist Grant Watson.31 Keenly aware she lacked academic accreditations, Bates felt it was a ‘huge honour even to be asked to cooperate with such learned professors, and I should love it’. Significantly, she wrote of incorporating herself and Radcliffe-Brown into Aboriginal kinship classifications to secure passage across the land.32 Radcliffe-Brown read Bates’s manuscript for The Native Tribes of Western Australia, but a disagreement left Bates alone as Radcliffe-Brown and Watson went on to Bernier Island.33 Historians tend to neglect Bates’s role in the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition by omitting it entirely, or erasing the importance of her expertise. One notable historian of anthropology writes: ‘Mrs Daisy Bates, [was] an amateur ethnographer and philanthropist, whom Radcliffe-Brown took on in a show of sexual egalitarianism.’ Noting they ‘soon quarrelled … Radcliffe-Brown decided to leave, and after a row abandoned poor Mrs Daisy Bates on her own’.34 This account is unusual in acknowledging Bates’s presence, but her inclusion is presented as an act of masculine generosity and expulsion as abandonment, rather than presenting ‘poor’ Bates as an active participant in the expedition’s success or the men’s gathering of information.

Bates later accused Radcliffe-Brown of plagiarism and rendering her manuscript ‘mutilated beyond recovery’ at the roving meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science that took place across several cities in Australia in 1914.35 Incontrovertible proof in Bates’s favour has never been found, but their contemporaries also questioned Radcliffe-Brown’s conduct. Bates’s biographer Elizabeth Salter grew suspicious of Radcliffe-Brown’s conduct after uncovering letters in which he explicitly noted Bates’s manuscript was worth publishing after revision.36 Salter corresponded with Rodney Needham, a British anthropologist specializing in Southeast Asia, who identified similarities between Radcliffe-Brown’s treatment of Bates and of the anthropologist Edward Horace Man. Needham felt that Man’s On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (1885) was unfairly disparaged and inappropriately credited in Radcliffe-Brown’s The Andaman Islanders (1922), despite being a better book. Needham also highlighted Radcliffe-Brown’s failure to retract his comments despite public rebukes from colleagues.37 Needham referred Salter to Norman B. Tindale’s Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: The Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names (1974). Tindale noted the important work done by Robert Hamilton Mathews, a surveyor working in Paramatta, in correspondence with Daisy Bates: ‘Even those versed in Australian literature may not have noticed how often his work was absorbed into the writings of A. R. Brown, one of his detractors, in such a manner as to obscure the fact that he was quoting rather than reporting primary data.’38 Radcliffe-Brown’s contemporaries evidently had reservations regarding his professional conduct and may have regarded Bates with more sympathy in private than they publicly disclosed.

Despite soured relationships with some men, the reputation of unrivalled expertise that Bates fashioned for herself led others to seek her out. The historian of anthropology Isobel White contends that Bates’s extensive desert stays enabled her to conduct a different kind of research from that of her male peers. While male colleagues were often fixated on social structures, White suggests that Bates’s writings are uniquely textured with details of quotidian life, food, knowledge of the geographical range of languages, descriptions of closely guarded ceremonies, and the first explanation of the geographical differences between matrilineal and patrilineal kinship structures.39 Bates’s surviving letters include many enquiries from amateurs and professionals who valued her research.40 Surviving enquiries about sexuality are particularly telling. In 1905, Kenneth Young wrote to Bates about his research on body modifications.41 In the same year, R. H. Mathew (the surveyor praised by Tindale) wrote to Young and Bates. One of his letters marked ‘Private’ solicited details regarding body modifications with graphic marginalia.42 Bates’s papers do not include a reply. Perhaps respectability made her reticent, but given the discussions of sexuality in her published work and private notes, she may simply have wished to protect her expertise.

Bates frequently claimed she had unparalleled access to Aboriginal knowledge. She asserted that Aboriginal peoples regarded her as a mystical ‘Kabbarli’, or grandmother: ‘I became an “ancestral sorceress” and finally Kabbarli but a magic Kabbarli.’43 She consistently stressed how readily Aboriginal peoples rewarded her patience with precious confidences:

My success, thank God, lies and has lain with my forbearance and readiness to serve them in trouble, and never never worrying them. Their time is so short with us – more than 50 of these groups have passed on. They used not to speak of their dead, but here with me, they are so keen to let one another know ‘all about Kabbarli’ that each knows what had been done for sick and dying Mother, sister or child. I hear it all as I remember and name each little grown-up friend.44

Bates deliberately lingered over her position within Aboriginal kinship networks and emphasized the willingness of her informants to break with the custom of not naming and speaking of the departed in order to share stories. Her claim that she complied with Aboriginal laws bolstered her assertions of privileged inclusion and ostensible respect. Crucially, this was not ‘going native’ and living as her subjects, but a calculated choice to observe and participate in some customs all while dressed as a respectable English lady in white gloves, long skirts, cropped jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat. Although Bates often presented herself as a sorceress, she occasionally divulged her more coercive measures to discipline informants or extract information. In particular, she detested Aboriginal people with white heritage and shunned them from her camp.45 She also insisted on particular manners or protocols for addressing her, such as waiting a certain distance away from her tent for attention. When these were not observed she refused to speak to individuals and would often send them away: ‘I had to banish them for the new vices they had adopted during my six years absence, 1935–1941’.46 More commonly though, she presented herself as a welcome and honoured family member with unrivalled anthropological expertise.

Prophesying Extinction

In 1934, after her last three-year stint in the desert, Daisy Bates decamped to Adelaide to write up her life’s work (Figure 5.3).47 With the help of her amanuensis Ernestine Hill, she edited her manuscript and submitted it to the publisher John Murray, partly attracted by their impressive back catalogue.48 She considered ‘Kabbarli’ as a title, but settled on ‘My Natives and I’. Her editor solicited peer reviews, and one pointedly distinguished between Bates’s undisputed experience and lack of credentials easily available only to men: ‘This is a book that requires a Preface by Scientific Expert. It needs such imprimatur: for although she, through living with the aborigines of Australia for over 30 years, witnessed the intimate life & tribal & racial customs, she has rather knowledge than scholarship on the subject.’49 A second referee also recommended a preface from a suitably eminent expert: ‘The author must be individual, and it is of course obvious that she thinks herself marvellous and that various other people are not; this may deprive it of attraction in some quarters … It also seems to me essential that the book should have an Introduction by some well-known authority, giving details of her family and her history.’50 Both reviewers felt the book could not stand on its own merits without being introduced, and therefore officially accredited, by a white male ‘Scientific Expert’. This conviction persisted even though one reviewer noted ‘quite evidently her studies were true’ and that the manuscript ‘As a human document … has value, and probably has scientific value also.’51 These reviews both acknowledged and undermined Bates’s expertise within a few short lines.

5.3 Darian D. Smith. ‘Mrs Daisy Bates at her desk in Adelaide, South Australia’ (1941).

Although Bates originally titled her manuscript ‘My Natives and I’, John Murray suggested ‘The Passing of the Aborigines’. After she approved the change as ‘a true title for my book’, it was finally published in 1938.52 Bates asked whether there was anything she could do to help secure reviews in the Australian press and offered extensive lists of potential publications and reviewers.53 She was partly motivated by economic necessity, but her letters also betray her desire to secure a legacy. Writing to Murray she confided: ‘I hope the book will succeed. I don’t think I’ve written a line that will hurt anyone living or dead.’54 Arthur Mee, a journalist known for writing The Children’s Encyclopaedia, and a friend of Bates, introduced her to readers as ‘one of the least known’ but ‘most romantic figures in the British Empire’. A woman who gave ‘her life and her heart to this dying race, the first people of our southern Dominion’, and all for the ‘love of humanity and for England’. He stressed her motherly devotion as ‘More than once the last member of one of these tribes has died in the arms of Daisy Bates.’ In private, she admitted that her life’s work had been a ‘self-imposed task of “making the passing easy” and doing all I could for their comfort’.55

Bates framed Aboriginal peoples in terms of past-tense losses, or present-tense dangers. She characterized settler colonial encroachment as a ‘contamination of civilization’ that would wipe out Aboriginal peoples despite anyone’s best efforts.56 Bates interviewed individuals she believed to be the last of the Noongar people from southwest Australia, and later wrote of having witnessed the ‘Last Perth Native Woman’ passing.57 She frequently referred to the deaths of particular individuals as the last of their kind, whether in terms of kinship, language, or geography. Discussions of sickly individuals, primitivism, and impending loss became intertwined with the leitmotif of extinction:

One thing runs through my book – the thorough understanding and sympathy and sorrow for the dying peoples … for those who I made ‘my natives’ … It will more or less impress every reader of the book in England and here in Australia and help them all to see more and more clearly the inevitable passing of these primitive peoples.58

Bates’s conviction is an obvious thread in the book, but it also surfaces continually in her private letters. In particular, she dreamt of a colonial governor presiding over the peoples she believed were doomed to die out: ‘I wonder if in the days to come they will have a King’s Man over them who will understand them and work in their interests and for their “happy passing” as I loved to work? Please God such a man will come.’59 This particular hope resurfaced in many of her letters, often accompanied by emphatic expressions of her love of King and Empire.60 She hoped John Murray might publish further work when her subjects had ‘become a memory’.61 Her correspondence is strewn with similar fatalistic predictions, often made as an aside in discussions of other matters. Bates’s research was marked by a possessive entitlement to ‘my natives’, framed by notions of imminent extinction, and her desire for their ‘happy passing’.

Bates’s life and work bridged older nineteenth-century writing on the shifting nature of extinction and later European colonial fantasies of annihilation. Born in 1859, she first drew breath in a world where debates about extinction, especially with reference to Aboriginal peoples, were rife, and usually expressed in nihilistic terms. Bates first visited Australia, including Tasmania, less than two decades after Trukanini’s death in 1876 was noted as that of the last of the Aboriginal Tasmanians. In 1893, Bates stayed in Hobart, Tasmania, and visited Donald MacKinnon, near Launceston, where she saw a photograph of Trukanini.62 Bates may even have seen Trukanini’s stolen skeleton as it was displayed against her wishes in the Hobart Museum until 1947.63 Like so many other ethnographers and anthropologists of the period, she kept an annotated photograph of Trukanini and photographic postcards of her and William Lanney in her papers.64 As Bates’s encounter and personal papers show, the ‘last Tasmanians’ were marketed as popular curios, with images and remains kept by settlers and scientists (Fig. 5.4). From the outset, Bates’s research was predicated on fatalistic expectations of the worldwide extinction of dying races. Claiming that Aboriginal peoples were endangered was common, but Bates refused to consider any preventive measures. She was convinced Aboriginal peoples were an ‘anachronism … withering from contact with the white man’s civilization, which can find no place for the primitive’. As such, she believed that nothing could, or should, be done to stave off annihilation. Instead, she observed: ‘I realized that they were passing from us. I must make their passing easier.’65 For a modern reader, encountering her desire feels like meeting a colonizer whose ego can only imagine providing palliative care for a dying race.

5.4 Glass phial labelled as containing the ‘Hair of Extinct Tasmanian Aboriginal’. The hair was likely to have been taken without consent, and is just one example of how ostensibly extinct peoples were turned into fragments collected by museums around the world.

Bates’s annihilatory pessimism was not universal. Writing in The Times just ten months before The Passing of the Aborigines was published, Frederic Wood Jones, then Professor of Anatomy at the University of Manchester and formerly of the University of Melbourne, noted that the Aboriginal population was probably over 300,000 when settlers invaded. He estimated that fewer than 55,000 Aboriginal individuals survived, but cautioned against ignoring the growing numbers of people with white and Aboriginal heritage, which were ‘increasing in numbers, and they have risen during the last 10 years from 11,000 to 22,000’.66 He urged governmental intervention to stem further depletion. His alertness to the growing numbers of people descended from Aboriginal peoples and settlers is significant because it did not immediately erase the Aboriginal heritage of anyone who did not fit European notions of who counted as Aboriginal. Many white settlers of this period, including Bates, imposed European notions of kinship and blood purity on Aboriginal peoples by discriminating between ostensibly authentic (‘full-blooded’) and non-authentic (‘half-caste’) Aboriginal heritage without much, or any, reference to Aboriginal peoples’ own definitions of kinship or belonging. As with other societies, such as the Beothuk in Newfoundland, colonial commentators privileged Europeans’ notions of kinship, fixed in fractions of blood, over Aboriginal relations to substantiate claims of imminent extinction.67

Bates’s stark insistence on the futility of protectionist measures is particularly chilling for an era when Aboriginal population numbers were recovering from the first waves of colonization. Her position contrasted with other colonial activists who campaigned for measures to protect Aboriginal ways of living, not just Aboriginal peoples. Donald Thomson, an anthropologist based in Melbourne, suggested that Aboriginal extinction might be prevented by establishing reservations.68 Reporting on the conditions in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory just two years before Bates’s book was published, Thomson believed it was an ‘undeniable fact that the native population is not only dying out rapidly, but that it is already on the road to extinction’. However, Thomson did not share Bates’s resignation. He feared ‘prolonged contact’ with Europeans or Asians would always cause Aboriginal ‘decay, and degradation and racial extinction’. He believed the only solution lay in ‘steps of a positive character’ (original emphasis).69 He was particularly concerned about the tendency for government plans to coerce Aboriginal peoples into agricultural subsistence: ‘Most of the projects that have so far been advanced for dealing with these natives assume at once that their culture is to be destroyed.’ In contrast, Thomson believed protection required ‘Absolute segregation with the Arnhem Land reserve. The social structure in toto should be preserved as an essential factor in the life of these people’ (original emphasis).70 Thomson was unusual in calling for extensive in situ protection of Aboriginal peoples and their culture.

White activists in the early 1930s more commonly endorsed segregating Aboriginal peoples on reservations or mission stations for conversion to Christianity.71 By the later 1930s, the University of Sydney professor of anthropology A. P. Elkin and many other activists were increasingly likely to eschew reservations in favour of granting Aboriginal peoples civil rights and expecting assimilation, sometimes forcibly through child removal. Earlier policies of absorption and systematic whitening gave way to a drive for assimilation after the Second World War. These policies were finally recognized as genocidal by the Australian government in a report in 1997 after decades of campaigning. The government finally issued an apology to the ‘Stolen Generations’ in 2008.72

Aboriginal activists opposed Bates’s colonial paternalism throughout the 1920s and 1930s. William Harris founded the Native Union of Western Australia in 1926. He fought for equal civil rights with a particular focus on the discriminatory provisions of the Aborigines Act 1905. These established the position of Chief Protector as legal guardian over all Aboriginal persons until they reached the age of sixteen, including the power to prevent marriages between Aboriginal individuals and white colonizers.73 Harris publicly rebuked Bates in the Sunday Times in 1921 when she reiterated her claims about cannibalism and belief that only strict segregation on the Central Australian Reserve would prevent residents being ‘contaminated by those already “within the pale of civilisation”’.74 She offered to police the reserve to stem any mixing, thereby maintaining the value of Aboriginal residents as human types for ethnologists. Harris responded by correcting her claims about cannibalism and reasoned that ‘any one with the brains of an oyster’ ought to know that the scheme would be a disgraceful ‘imprisonment for those that are in, and perpetual banishment for those that are on the outside of the boundary’. Harris encouraged Bates to focus on doing good ‘among the poor and needy white women and children’.75 A month later, an unrelated James Harris protested against ‘being so grossly insulted and libelled in this manner. We would like to know who set Mrs. Bates up to be the accuser, judge and jury over us’.76

Aboriginal activists disputed Bates’s strongest beliefs about who counted as Aboriginal, the best policies for their future and, significantly, who should administer such protection, nearly two decades before her book was published. Bates’s efforts at maintaining strict segregation, her refusals to acknowledge anyone with a fraction of white heritage as Aboriginal, and her insistence that Aboriginal people only needed ministering for easier ‘passing’ were all challenged by broader shifts in Aboriginal activism during the 1920s and 1930s. The campaigner Fred Maynard Sydney founded the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association in 1924, and a decade later William Cooper established the Australian Aborigines’ League.77 Despite these fights for civil rights and citizenship, Bates continued in full conviction of the scientific value of her work and remained committed to her belief in the imminent extinction of Aboriginal peoples.

The ‘Great White Queen of the Never Never’

Daisy Bates’s book received a mixed reception. Australian ethnographers were singularly unconvinced by her accusations that cannibalism was rife among her subjects. As John Murray tried to drum up interest, he received both refusals to help and commendations. One reviewer commented on ‘so much in the book that is unconvincing’.78 Another reviewer for the Illustrated London News felt that Bates was a ‘wonderful interpreter’ whose book contained ‘a great deal of information for the anthropologists, not all of whom travel amongst the people they write about’.79 Although unfavourably received among ethnographers and activists, Bates’s book found an eager readership outside academic and missionary circles.

Despite attracting criticism for her tales of promiscuity and cannibalism, Bates stressed in private correspondence to Murray that the book might have been even more sensational:

If I were not the ‘me’ I am, I could have written an exciting book, making use of my intimacy with these dying people, to make the book ‘sell’ but I never looked upon my natives as purely ‘copy’. They liked me from the beginning and in their way they ‘proved me’; and so gave me their entire trust.80

This admission reveals how deliberately Bates cultivated an identity as someone privy to authentic and unparalleled knowledge of Aboriginal customs, while underplaying the controversial and routinely disputed nature of her views. Her declarations also reveal a profound concern with asserting intellectual ownership. In one letter to her publisher, she noted: ‘I would like to keep the authorship of these things it cost me so much to obtain.’81 Bates’s substantial personal and economic privations made her sensitive to protecting her findings, but she also wanted to be remembered in specific ways.

Bates crafted her legacy through destroying some papers and making bequests. Despite her ‘heartfelt regret’, she destroyed the personal diaries she kept from 1899 to 1940 to prevent anyone ever reading them, most likely to protect her privacy.82 She also longed to be remembered by the Aboriginal peoples among whom she once lived: ‘I’m nearly halfway to my 80th milestone, and I want to be sure that my natives will remember “Kabbarli”’ (original emphasis).83 Likewise, Bates intended to donate her papers to the University in Adelaide as early as 1931, expecting them to be ‘an asset to university scientists in years to come when conditions are favourable to Scientific Exploration’.84 Bates’s explicit concern with legacy suggests a researcher who was confident in the value of her research in spite of discrimination, and for whom writing became an act of personal and ethnographic memorialization. Her book ended with a characteristic longing: ‘if the slightest impression of anything I have said or done, by example or in devotion, remains with them in comfort for the past or hope for the future, I shall be content’.85

On 18 April 1951, Bates passed away, survived by so many whose extinction she had foretold. She bequeathed the residue of her estate ‘for the relief of poverty and distress and the improvement of the conditions of life in such manner as my trustees may think fit among the Australian Aborigines residing in or resorting to the district of Ooldea and its vicinity in the State of Western Australia’.86 Inadvertently, she left a far more valuable bequest.

Bates’s reputation partly rests upon her linguistic expertise. Her papers in the National Library of Australia contain 4,500 typed pages, alongside notebooks covered with her distinctive spidery handwriting in faded brown ink. Much of her early information was collated through questionnaires she produced when working for the state of Western Australia. The questionnaire pleaded for informants to help with the state’s attempt to ‘compile, whilst the material is still procurable, a short authentic historical record of the Habits, Customs, and Language of the various tribes of the Aboriginal natives of this State’.87 Even in the earliest days of listing vocabularies, Bates proceeded on the assumption that she was studying populations doomed to extinction. Her papers include 23,000 pages of notes on languages and world lists. These vocabularies have now been digitized and made publicly available through the Digital Daisy Bates website. The remarkable resource provides access to her research, most importantly for Aboriginal peoples to research their own heritage.88

Languages are easily lost forms of knowledge. They capture different ways of knowing the world, and their loss diminishes our heritage. Anyone who has ever tried to translate texts between languages knows how difficult it can be because words and expressions can encapsulate entire concepts for which there may be no equivalent in another tongue. UNESCO has long been associated with the protection of monumental remains and spectacular landscapes, but concern for languages has prompted their recognition as important forms of ‘intangible’ human heritage. UNESCO warns that around half of the world’s 6,000 living languages will be unspoken as everyday languages before the end of the century. Threatened languages were first listed in the Red Book of Endangered Languages (1994), but were later replaced by the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (1996), and are now incorporated into the World Atlas of Languages launched online in 2021.89

Akin to the Red List of endangered species, UNESCO catalogues and classifies the world’s endangered languages as one of the following:

Vulnerable, when still spoken by children, but often in restricted spaces

Definitely endangered, once children are not taught the language as their ‘mother tongue’

Severely endangered, where elders and grandparents speak the language, parents may understand it, but children often don’t

Critically endangered, as soon as even the youngest speakers are elders who no longer remain fluent or use the language irregularly

Extinct after there are no known speakers remaining.

Language loss can occur within a couple of generations, particularly when younger children are not taught ancestral tongues. Many first- and second-generation migrants, even if they speak a language with numerous native speakers, are likely to recognize the scenario underpinning ‘severely endangered’ languages when parents become linguistic bridges between grandparents and grandchildren. While Daisy Bates’s research on languages is explored further, her writings have already played an important role in legal cases.

Many colonized peoples who outlived dire prophecies of their extinction have sought restitution, especially of their ancestral lands. In 1992 a landmark ruling in the case of Mabo v. Queensland (no. 2) led to the introduction of the Native Title Act 1993.90 Early campaigns for Aboriginal rights tended to seek civil rights accorded to white settlers; from 1968 onwards, campaigns increasingly focused on Indigenous rights, emphasizing Aboriginal peoples’ ancestral connections to the land through historic occupation and their Aboriginality. Eddie Mabo, an Indigenous Torres Strait Islander, fought for the recognition of his rights and those of others. The case dragged on for years. The final ruling in favour of Mabo established that ‘native title exists and is recognized by the common law of Australia.’91 The recognition of native title was significant, but many activists prefer and seek ‘Land rights’ because they secure specific recognition of ongoing interests in the land and must be granted through separate legal arrangements. Numerous claims from Aboriginal peoples seeking restitution through the recognition of native title and granting of land rights have reached Australian courts. This connects to a broader global shift in recognizing the special status of Indigenous peoples in settler societies such as New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. The United Nations established a Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in 1982, which finally led to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 after many years of drafting and debate.92 Bates’s papers are an important resource for reclaiming Aboriginal rights because they provide historical evidence of ties to the land that are necessary for legal recognition.

Fanny Balbuk Yoreel, a Whadjuk woman born in 1840, lived through the early colonization of Whadjuk country, which she refused to accept throughout her life. Her immediate family connected her to considerable knowledge of Aboriginal ties to the land, including her grandfather, who witnessed the arrival of Europeans, and also her father, mother, and uncle.93 Bates interviewed Balbuk and wrote about her publicly after her death in 1907, in press reports, journal articles, and her book. Her readers learned that Balbuk was the ‘last Perth woman’ who ‘To the end of her life … raged and stormed at the usurping of her beloved home ground.’94 This included protesting the building of Government House over the grave of her grandmother and breaking fences erected across her walking routes. Bates prized Balbuk’s information as ‘unspoiled by white influence of any kind’.95 Bates’s correspondents also valued Balbuk’s knowledge and body. Writing to Bates in 1902, John Mathew was keen that she should obtain Balbuk’s skull, believing she represented a particularly archaic human type.96 On Balbuk’s death in 1907, Bates lamented her passing as one that extinguished any possibility of reliable information about her people.97 Bates tried to obtain the skull, but when her request was rebuffed, she fantasized about body-snatching as an alternative.98 This private correspondence is just one example of a much broader and well-established process. Aboriginal bodies were frequently desecrated by anthropologists, curators, and medical practitioners to secure supplies for museums and medical collections throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.99

Balbuk’s refusal of early colonial encroachment makes her an important resistance fighter to present-day Aboriginal peoples, and holds new legal significance.100 Balbuk’s attachment to her land, as recorded and interpreted by Bates, helped support a land-rights claim by the Noongar people in Western Australia, including the state capital Perth. For formal legal recognition of Native Title, the Australian government requires Aboriginal peoples to demonstrate that they have ongoing, largely uninterrupted ties to their ancestral lands, including continued observance of their rites. The state government argued that the Noongar people did not meet these criteria. The Noongar people used Bates’s research to challenge the government’s position. Court records state:

The evidence identifies two persons who wrote about the south-west Aborigines in the early 20th century – the latest point of time at which it was possible for any writer to have contact with a person who was alive in 1829, or born shortly thereafter. One of those writers was Professor A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Professor of Anthropology at Sydney University. His work The social organisation of Australian tribes was published in 1930–1931. This work is widely respected by modern anthropologists. However, it is not in evidence. I gather it dealt sparsely with the south-west and casts little light on the issues that call for determination in this case. The other … was Daisy Bates … Bates was not a trained anthropologist and her writings have been criticised, both for their lack of organisation and for Bates’ pronounced Eurocentric judgments. However, even her critics acknowledge her great industry and excellent rapport with Aborigines. She is widely regarded as having been a good observer and patient listener. Dr Brunton [an expert witness in the case] said Bates engaged in ‘participant observation’.101

These records trace an extraordinary twist of fate. Bates was cited alongside Radcliffe-Brown. Qualms about her institutional standing and lack of formal anthropological training were evident, but her use of ‘participant observation’ rendered her a sufficiently reliable, and even preferable, source to Radcliffe-Brown. The court records also included significant extracts from Bates’s posthumously published The Native Tribes of Western Australia, including references to Balbuk, her family, their genealogy, and experiences of early colonization. Despite inconsistencies in Bates’s notes, court documents show her records of Balbuk’s knowledge were critical in establishing that the Noongar had long-standing ties to their land before settlement. In 2006, Judge Justice Murray Wilcox found in favour of the claim to about 200,000 square kilometres. The verdict was overturned on appeal, but ultimately the South West Native Title Settlement was agreed. It recognized the Noongar people as the Traditional Owners of the region and their right to co-manage Crown land with the Western Australian government, a first for a state capital.102

The Passing of the Aborigines secured Daisy Bates’s infamy. Critics reproached her for writing sensationalist, inaccurate tall tales about cannibalism, murder, and sexual intrigue. Her writings remain deeply controversial. Devotees romanticized her as a compassionate woman doing her best to offer vanishing peoples palliative care. Bates’s life and writings are relatively well known within Australia, but often forgotten elsewhere. Her story can be told in multiple ways. Some writers portray her as a romantic, eccentric, and independent woman making a life for herself in the Australian outback, whereas critics emphasize her racism and profoundly damaging views of Aboriginal peoples.103 Historians of anthropology tend to dismiss Bates as an eccentric amateur of little scientific or anthropological importance in comparison to professional men such as Radcliffe-Brown. In her own lifetime, Bates insisted on the value of her work and wrote that in time ‘The “cycle” of half-educated bewhiskered young “ologists” will have passed and steady well-read all-round scientists will come into their own.’104 Understanding the impediments she faced as a woman, Bates hoped that future generations would recognize her worth.

Bates’s research was a form of salvage anthropology conducted in absolute conviction of impending Aboriginal extinction. She left twinned legacies for Aboriginal peoples and historians of extinction. Her writings, especially The Passing of the Aborigines, retold the violent invasion of the continent we call Australia, and the subsequent dispossession of Aboriginal peoples as an inevitable process of extinction. In spite of Bates’s hopes, the resuscitation of her research as a valuable resource has not come at the hands of scientists or anthropologists, but from the determination of Aboriginal activists. Through reframing the purpose of her archives, Aboriginal peoples are fighting for recognition and recompense. Bates’s refusal to accept Aboriginal sovereignty and colonial paternalism means she could never have imagined, let alone welcomed, such a legacy. Yet, in spite of herself, she has helped secure some measure of redress for those she expected to outlive.

Part Two

EMPIRE’S ENDLINGS

6.

Red Alert!

In the bitter winter of 1741, the Danish-born Russian explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering and the German naturalist, physician, and explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller were shipwrecked on a remote island in the North Pacific. Stranded in November, twenty-eight men, including Bering, perished. Forty-six survivors built a boat from the wreckage and set sail for Russia in August 1742. They finally returned home a decade after leaving. The men aboard the stranded St Peter were on the Second Kamchatka expedition (1733–43). Before the sudden death of Peter the Great in 1725, the emperor had hoped to settle whether Asia and America were connected by a land bridge through sponsoring a state scientific expedition. Bering duly found a strait, now bearing his name, between Asia and America on the First Kamchatka expedition (1725–7). On the second expedition, Bering and his men became the first Europeans to reach Alaska in July 1741 in an era when the North Pacific and Arctic were barely known, but they were stranded on Bering Island as they returned. Steller occupied his days observing the marine wildlife around him, including a gargantuan manatee-like creature known as the sea cow.1

Sea cows once lived across the North Atlantic, but slowly retreated to waters around the Commander Islands in the Bering Sea by the time Steller encountered them (Fig. 6.1). Sea cows were sociable animals that congregated in shallow water to feast on kelp. Hunted by local Aleutian islanders, the beasts were so large and heavy that up to thirty men might be needed to haul an individual cow ashore. Steller found many washed-up carcasses which he dissected. He measured one specimen at just over 7.5 metres (c. 25 feet) long. He described their milk as ‘very rich and sweet’, and their meat as ‘like corned beef and very excellent in flavour’.2 Steller died in 1746 within a few years of describing the sea cow that was named after him. The creatures fared little better as commercial hunting caused their extinction in less than forty years. The English explorer Martin Sauer noted that the ‘Sea cows were very numerous about the coast of Kamchatka, and the Aleutian Islands, at the time when they were first discovered; but the last of this species was killed in 1768 on Bering’s island, and none have been ever seen since.’3 Likewise, the German naturalist and explorer Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff observed that Steller’s sea cow ‘must now be ranked among the list of beings lost from the animal kingdom, like the dodo, the mammoth, the carnivorous elephant of Ohio, and others’.4

6.1 Steller’s sea cow.

When the reality of pervasive natural extinctions was first established during the French Revolution, geologists tended to focus on exploring historical losses, often in deep time; with growing awareness of the extinction of Steller’s sea cow in the 1760s, naturalists slowly reimagined the fate of living species as uncertain, and even threatened by unnatural extinctions caused by human exploitation. The loss of a megafaunal species in living memory provided important evidence that extinction was not only an ancient or primarily historical phenomenon, but a present-day possibility. As naturalists and hunters witnessed the decline of once prolific species, from great auks to bison, they issued increasingly urgent and frequent calls to action. Naturalists established the notion of vanishing species as they shifted from debating the nature of extinction to the threat of endangerment. Efforts to save some species, such as the bison, were successful in the later nineteenth century, but the broader notion of international nature protection followed after the Second World War. Listing threatened species emerged as one of the most widely used strategies to inform modern conservation efforts. Understanding how the concept of vanishing species emerged, and why we classify and count the species we worry we might lose, reveals how we have shaped our place within the realms of the extinct, the threatened, and the thriving.

Vanishing Futures

Naturalists in the early nineteenth century rarely thought about dwindling animal populations as threatened, even when they berated humanity for its persecution of the animal world. In 1824 the Reverend John Fleming accused humans of indulging in ‘unremitting persecution … against the lower animals, during the long term of nearly 6,000 years’, ensuring the ‘geographical range of many species’ was transformed while the ‘weapons of the huntsman completed the extinction of many animals’.5 Fleming lamented the disappearance of birds such as eagles, bustards, and western capercaillie from across the British Isles, and expanded on his list of ‘extirpated’ and ‘extinct’ species in A History of British Animals (1828). In later decades, the diplomat and antiquarian George Perkins Marsh reprimanded humans for wreaking havoc on the natural world in his book Man and Nature (1864): ‘Man has too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste.’ Significantly, Marsh continued, ‘man’ alone ‘commences an almost indiscriminate warfare upon all the forms of animal and vegetable existence around him, and as he advances in civilization, he gradually eradicates or transforms every spontaneous product of the soil he occupies’.6 Marsh is often credited with foreshadowing modern ecological science because he imagined nature as an interdependent system. Despite such moral certainty about humanity’s profligacy, Fleming and Marsh were unusual in calling attention to the scale of harm.7 Marsh, in particular, explicitly drew on the fate of the dodo, Steller’s sea cow, and the great auk to argue that ‘man’ alone left a trail of extinctions in his wake.

The great auk, or garefowl, was a sea bird that lived across the North Atlantic. The bird stood proudly at about 70 to 85 centimetres tall (28 to 33 inches). Its white abdomen contrasted with a deep black beak, small head, and back, as if wearing a rather dashing dinner jacket. Although the short stubby wings were useless for flight, they swiftly powered the bird through ocean waters in search of fish. Although the great auk looks remarkably like a small penguin, it is formally classified in the same family as guillemots, razorbills, and puffins. The Beothuk of Newfoundland harvested the great auk, and its eggs, annually, for its meat, oil, and feathers, but the bird’s demise was sealed by trade. Europeans hunted the great auk for food, oil, and fish bait for centuries, but they started to harvest great auk feathers for bedding in the eighteenth century. As great auk populations plummeted from the industrialized killing, their skins and eggs were increasingly rare and valuable. Their large pale eggs were mottled with dark inky patterns to help nesting birds identify their own, but that evolutionary advantage also turned each egg into an ornithological treasure. The last pair of great auks was seen, and killed, by collectors hired by a merchant in 1844 on Eldney island, off the coast of southwest Iceland.8 Skins and eggs were highly prized by collectors, but only about eighty great auk specimens, and some eggs, survive in museum collections around the world.

Extinct birds such as the great auk and dodo captured the public imagination in the 1860s, just as naturalists started to consider extinction as a process. The great auk features in Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1862–3) while the dodo appears in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865). The books made both birds into the icons of extinction that they are today. Despite suspicions that the species was lost, the ornithologist Alfred Newton and naturalist John Wolley set sail in the hope of seeing a living great auk in 1858. Their interests in natural history were supported by family fortunes made through industrialization and enslavement. Wolley’s grandfather Richard Arkwright transformed textile production by inventing the spinning frame, while Newton’s family owned West Indian sugar plantations. Wolley’s extraordinary bird egg collection was only possible because of his inheritance. Despite voyaging for two months in search of the great auk, the men returned home from Eldney island without success and were forced to console themselves with reams of notes from their conversations with islanders.9

As Newton pored over his records, he was convinced that understanding the great auk’s demise might help clarify how even the most seemingly inexhaustible species could vanish. He suspected that the great auk was driven to extinction by commercial exploitation. Suggesting that a once abundant species could be exterminated so rapidly was a startling possibility since extinct species, such as the dodo or Steller’s sea cow, were known only from significantly smaller ranges. Despite clinging to his hope that great auks might be alive into the 1860s, Newton noted they were effectively ‘a thing of the past’. Lamenting that the ‘exterminating process’ attracted ‘little or no attention until the doom of the victim is sealed’, Newton began to think of extinction as a progressive process of loss that might be triggered by humanity’s destructiveness, but, crucially, one that might be stalled or even halted.10 Motivated by his new understanding of the ‘exterminatory process’, Newton turned to wildlife protection. He contributed to writing the first British legislation for protecting sea birds in 1869 and promoted the work of the Society for the Protection of Birds. Emily Williamson founded the society in 1889 to campaign against the use of feathers in fashionable ladieswear, with a royal charter following in 1904. Soon, many more naturalists shared Newton’s view of unnatural extinction.

As hunters, naturalists, and collectors across Europe and North America witnessed the demise of big game in the later nineteenth century, they grew concerned. Bison in North America and the ‘big five’ prized beasts of Africa (lions, rhinos, cape buffalos, leopards, and elephants) drew particular attention. The declining numbers of these charismatic species attracted dire warnings from hunters about the threat to wild lives. By the 1880s, startled naturalists, hunters, and curators noted the devastating impact of European colonialism across North America. As one writer for the periodical Science observed: ‘The course of the pioneer has ever been marked by slaughter of animal life, too often recklessly, even for the mere sport of killing, and not merely from necessity or with utilitarian intent.’11 These claims provided important recognition that, despite extensive hunting by Native nations, many species remained plentiful until European colonizers and pioneers targeted bigger beasts for sport, trade, or as vermin.

North American bison populations plummeted from an estimated 30 million in 1800 to fewer than a hundred before the end of the century. Bison are wild cattle whose magnificent herds once migrated across the Great Bison Belt, a tract of habitat that connected Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico. Adult bulls can easily weigh a metric tonne, reach ten feet long, and stand six feet high at the shoulder, while the cows are slightly smaller. Despite their size, they are remarkably swift and can outrun most horses, reaching speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. Many Native nations used bison for food, furs, and tools. In the nineteenth century, bison hunters slaughtered the beasts on an industrial scale for trade. Bison were often killed just for their tongues, but they were also hunted for skins, while their bones were crushed, burned, and processed into bone china, glue, fertilizer, and ash.12

In the late nineteenth century, the killing of bison was deliberately pursued even when the annihilation of the species was predicted. Writing in 1876, the naturalist Joel Asaph Allen observed that the herds of bison once occupying a third of the North American continent had been ‘gradually exterminated’ in so many regions that there was ‘nothing to mark their former presence but their rapidly crumbling skeletal remains and their well-worn trails’.13 Government officials and military men regarded the extermination of the bison as an ideal means of depriving Native nations of their subsistence and forcing them onto reservations. In this guise, loss was encouraged and equated with civilized progress.14 By the 1880s, Yellowstone National Park was the last sanctuary of the remaining bison. Building on Allen’s early warnings, the taxidermist and hunter William Temple Hornaday penned numerous publications about the bleak prospects facing wild lives, including The Extermination of the Bison (1889) and Our Vanishing Wildlife (1913). With the ‘sting of a rapier thrust’, Hornaday noted that there were no grounds to ‘hope that a single wild and unprotected individual [bison] will remain alive ten years hence. The nearer the species approaches to complete extermination, the more eagerly are the wretched fugitives pursued to the death whenever found.’15 Campaigners for bison protection were motivated both by the desire to ensure the survival of a natural resource and by romantic notions of pioneering vigour.

American naturalists often discussed vanishing species within broader conversations about racial peril. In transatlantic debates of the eighteenth century, ‘race’ described animal varieties, especially within the context of husbandry. Later scholars used ‘race’ to describe peoples across a broad spectrum of difference, from merely varieties to nations, or in more extreme cases, distinct species. Within broader debates about American colonization, eighteenth-century European naturalists were convinced that North America’s cold wilds sustained only under-developed wildlife unable to match the fecund magnitude of European beasts. Writers, such as the future president Thomas Jefferson, defended their new nation so successfully that by the end of the nineteenth century, the continent’s deliberately unpeopled wilderness and frontier life was associated with a vigorous racial superiority for ‘old-stock’ white Americans descended from European colonists. As the environmental historian Miles Powell judiciously notes, white Americans advocating for their own racial ‘supremacy believed that their nation’s distinctly democratic government owed in part to innate racial characteristics derived from Angle, Saxon, Jute, and Viking ancestors’. Moreover, these writers insisted that they ‘reached their pinnacle by conquering America’s wilderness. This process had created a special bond between the continent’s wild lands and its white race, a connection that appeared threatened with the closing of the frontier.’16 These complicated associations between the European colonization of North America and notions of racial vigour were tied to debates about vanishing species by the late nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, dedicated reservations for the bison were founded and their populations slowly recovered.

Bison were pulled back from the brink of extinction in a period when vanishing species were seldom protected, even when their rarity was widely acknowledged. The lack of conservation measures is probably a shock to modern readers, but such expectations are the product of decades of living in an age when wildlife protection is a well-established international concern. In the early twentieth century, as naturalists grappled with the unnatural extinctions of once abundant species and the plight of threatened species, they helped create new institutions and tools for wildlife conservation.

Penitent Butchers

The international conservationist movement was founded at the start of the twentieth century. In 1900 naturalists, gentlemen, hunters, aristocrats, and colonial officials concerned with the fate of African wildlife attended a specialist conference in London to deliberate over the future of threatened wildlife. After considerable discussion, the Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa (also known as the London Convention of 1900) was signed by states with African colonial territories, including Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The convention was neither ratified nor implemented. Three years later, frustrated by inaction, many of the same men formed the British Society for the Preservation of Wild Fauna of the Empire, just before Christmas in a meeting held at the Natural History Museum in London. Quickly dubbed the ‘penitent butchers’, they campaigned for the ‘protection of the wild fauna in all British possessions’ as the ‘the heritage of Empire, which if it be once lost, can never be replaced’.17 These men were primarily concerned with preserving big game in Africa by establishing pristine nature parks, devoid of local peoples, and regulating hunting. After Yellowstone was established as the world’s first national park in 1872, the subsequent rush to establish national parks and stimulate tourism dispossessed Native nations of their lands. Later lobbyists shifted strategies by arguing that parks were sanctuaries for endangered species. The American model proved immensely powerful as preservationists who favoured maintaining ostensibly untouched wilderness clashed for decades with conservationists who sought to actively manage protected landscapes for human use.18

Nature protection gained an institutional foothold after the First World War. In 1913 concerned officials discussed founding a new international organization for the protection of nature at a conference convened in Bern, Switzerland, but the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 halted plans. Almost exactly a decade after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the International Office of Documentation and Correlation for the Protection of Nature was finally founded in Brussels in October 1928. Six years later, the name was changed to the International Office for the Protection of Nature, or IOPN, but its activities remained rather limited compared to its founding members’ ambitions.19 Across the Atlantic, the American Committee for International Wild Life Protection, or ACIWLP, was founded in 1930 by the naturalists John C. Phillips and Harold, or ‘Hal’, J. Coolidge, partly motivated by their experiences of hunting diminishing numbers of trophies or museum specimens in Africa.20 Both Phillips and Coolidge were adamant that nature protection was an ‘international obligation’.21 It may seem obvious that protecting nature is, and ought to be, of international concern, particularly since species do not observe political borders, whether because of migration or living in territories across nations, but this argument had to be made and won. Early discussions between organizations such as the IOPN and ACIWLP made conservation into the global political project of today. Experts forged new career paths as ‘nature’s diplomats’ within interwar and post-war governance structures such as the League of Nations, founded in 1920, the United Nations, or UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), both founded in 1945.22 The success of these men, and it was largely men, in wresting wildlife protection from national control fundamentally shaped international wildlife management to the present day.

Older inventories of extinct beasts were complemented by new lists of endangered species between the World Wars. In 1933 conservationists met in London to continue the diplomatic work of the pre-war years. They produced the ‘London Convention’, which proved influential by defining new classes of threatened animals. Class A species were defined as needing extensive protection to survive and included twenty-one species, predominantly focused on large mammals such as several species of antelope, the okapi, pigmy hippopotamus, mountain zebra, white rhinoceros, hartebeest, and elephant alongside gorillas, lemurs, wolves; as well as birds such as the whale-headed stork, bald-headed Ibis, and white-breasted guineafowl, and one plant, Welwitschia mirabilis, found in the Namib Desert in Southern Africa. Class B species were defined as in need of some protection and included twenty-two species of mammals and birds including the chimpanzee, colobus monkey, giraffe, giant eland, black rhinoceros, pangolin, ostrich, and several species of egret.23

The American naturalist John C. Phillips returned home from the meeting brimming with ideas. He was especially keen that the ACIWLP create an ‘authoritative inventory’ of extinct and endangered species.24 Phillips drummed up the funding to commission the naturalist Francis Harper to begin the project in 1936. He was expected to complete the project in a year, but everyone underestimated the task ahead. Phillips died within two years and never saw the list published. The naturalist Glover M. Allen was hired to help complete the list. Allen’s report was eventually published as Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere with the Marine Species of All the Oceans in 1942 and Harper’s report was published as Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Old World in 1945. Almost a decade later, James Greenaway’s Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World was published in 1954. These three reports inspired lists of threatened species published after the Second World War.25

As the immediate shock of the Second World War receded, a delegation of diplomats, government officials, and naturalists congregated at the Palace of Fontainebleau outside Paris. François I had transformed the original medieval hunting lodge amid ancient forest into a palace where French kings held court from the sixteenth century, until the Revolution robbed them of their titles and heads. In autumn 1948 the palace teemed with delegates from nation states and non-governmental organizations gathered to discuss the future of endangered wildlife.26 The idea of an international organization dedicated to nature conservation was raised two years earlier, and European delegates were keen for these conversations to bear fruit. On Thursday, 5 October 1948 delegates signed the constitution of the newly founded International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN), which superseded the older IOPN.27

The IUPN quickly took on the task of monitoring endangered species. Within a year, the American government hosted a meeting of the new organization at Lake Success, near New York, in late summer and early autumn 1949 alongside a UNESCO conference on natural resources.28 Coolidge presented a paper proposing ‘Emergency Action for the Preservation of Vanishing Species’ and calling for an ‘International Survival Office’ to co-ordinate ‘periodic reports’ on the ‘present status of all patent and vanishing species’.29 Coolidge had aired his ideas for a Survival Office earlier that year, and his proposal was adopted as a key task for the IUPN.30 As Chairman of the new Survival Service, Coolidge hoped to update existing lists of vanishing mammals and extend the same coverage to endangered ‘flora, and eventually to reptiles, amphibians and fishes, as well as to invertebrates’.31 Driven by his desire to update the Harper and Allen reports on vanishing mammals, Coolidge’s ambitions for more comprehensive lists were kick-started when delegates of the conference at Lake Success created two preliminary lists of vanishing species for ‘immediate and vigorous action’.32 The species listed were as follows:

Birds

Arabian Ostrich (Struthio camelus syriacus)

Hawaiian Goose (Nesochen sandvicensis)

New Caledonian Kagou (Rhinochethus jubatus)

Indian Pink-Headed Duck (Rhodenessa caryophyllacea)

Australian Ground Parakeet (Pezoporus wallicus)

Laysan Duck (Anas laysanensis)

Marianas Mallard (Anas oustaleti)

Cuban Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis bairdii)

Bermuda Petrel (Pterodroma cahow)

Marianas Megapode (Megapodius laperouse)

California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus)

Eskimo Curlew (Numenius borealis)

North American Whooping Crane (Grus americana)

Mammals

Javan One-Horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus)

Indian One-Horned Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis)

Asiatic Lion (Leo leo persicus)

Burmese Brow-Antlered Deer (Rucervus eldii eldii)

Giant Sable Antelope (Hippotragus variani)

North African Bubal (Alcelaphus buselaphus)

Tasmanian Wolf (Thylacinus cynocephalus)

Marsupial Banded Anteater (Myrmecobius fasciatus fasciatus)

Wisent (Bison bonasus bonasus)

Chinchilla (Chinchilla, all species)

Mountain Zebra (Equus zebra zebra)

Caribbean Monk Seal (Monachus tropicalis)

Addo Bush Elephant (Loxodonta africana africana)

Cuban Solenodon (Solenodon cubanus)

Even if these names are unfamiliar, the lists reveal the bias towards birds and mammals, and the preoccupation of early conservationists for emergency action to be taken regarding well-known, often large, charismatic species. Coolidge acknowledged the limitations of the lists, but he still felt they were worthwhile preliminary indicators of the need for more authoritative and comprehensive lists of species targeted for ‘emergency action’. Delegates also resolved that the IUPN should promote and sponsor ecological research to best advise governments about protecting wildlife. The listed species faced diverging fates. Some such as the Caribbean monk seal were extinct within a few years, others such as whooping cranes survived with intensive efforts, while the last known thylacine had already passed away.

Thylacines, also known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, once roamed across the lands now known as Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania. Thylacines arrived in Australia and Tasmania far more recently than people. These curiously beautiful and shy wolf-like carnivores had short, tawny fur, and darker brown stripes across their backs (Fig. 6.2). Despite resembling dogs, thylacine mothers raised their young in a pouch, so biologists classify them as marsupials, like the kangaroo or possum. Aboriginal art depicts thylacines on rocks across the continent, but they died out on the mainland long ago. Scientists exploring the thylacine’s demise suspect that a number of factors, such as competition with dingoes or climate change, caused their local extinction around three thousand, perhaps three and a half thousand, years ago, with only a remnant of anywhere between two and five thousand surviving in Tasmania into the nineteenth century.33 These scenarios and numbers are hotly debated, but Aboriginal records prove that thylacines lived across a much larger range than the ‘Tasmanian’ moniker suggests, and in much larger numbers than when they were added to the list of threatened species at Lake Success. The last known thylacine died in Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936. Often called Benjamin, she died fifty-six days after the Tasmanian government named her a protected species and twelve years before her species was listed at Lake Success.

6.2 A thylacine, probably in Hobart Zoo (1930).

Thylacines lived alongside Aboriginal Tasmanians for millennia, but they were driven to extinction in little more than a century after European colonizers reached Tasmania in 1803. As colonists settled on the island, they established farms, reared sheep, and introduced dogs. When farmers lost livestock to local predators, they blamed thylacines and killed them as pests. In 1830 the Van Diemen’s Land Company offered a bounty for every thylacine killed, and the state followed in 1888, offering £1 for every dead carcass. Government records show thousands of bounties were paid, and the persecution of thylacines led to plummeting numbers. Thylacines were considered rare when Benjamin died, but her death was only marked retrospectively. Until the 1960s, reports of thylacine sightings were common, but none were confirmed. As hunters, zoos, and collectors failed to find living thylacines, Benjamin’s death gained significance, as it dawned on conservationists that she was the last known of her species. Despite extensive searching by amateur enthusiasts and biologists, conclusive proof, such as the body of a thylacine, has never been found.34 The IUCN officially declared thylacines extinct in 1986, and 7 September is now officially observed as Threatened Species Day in Australia.

The listing of thylacines, and the subsequent debates about whether they survive, reveal many aspects of the nature of listing. For all its limitations, early conservationists welcomed listing as an important means of recognizing and tracking the state of vanishing species, but listing provided little protection on its own. As campaigners developed their new surveillance tool, it was embedded within policy-making and public-awareness campaigns. This entrenched both listing as a practice and species as the preferred taxonomic unit of modern international conservation.

Endangered!

The Survival Service developed listing into one of its most important modern conservation tools from 1948 onwards. Conservationists working for the Survival Service kept a card index to collate and track any information they received about ‘threatened species’.35 Keen to update the Lake Success lists, the Survival Service drafted a questionnaire on vanishing mammals to collate information on the history and ecology of endangered mammals alongside suggestions for protective measures. Sent to numerous specialists, the questionnaire is an early example of the Survival Service proactively collecting and compiling new information on endangered species.36 In 1952 responsibility for maintaining a list of endangered birds was transferred to the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP, later BirdLife International).37 In the same year, the young ecologist Lee Merriam Talbot conducted fieldwork on threatened species in the Middle East, India, Nepal, and Southeast Asia. Talbot ventured across the world seeking information from scientists, government officials, and conservationists while also exploring the forests, deserts, and savannahs where the threatened species made their homes.38 Meanwhile, botanists within the IUPN created a system for classifying endangered plants based on the categories used for animals.39 Extending categories developed to define threatened animals towards plants allowed the Survival Service to proactively develop ways to classify degrees of endangerment for all life on earth.

Threatened species were regarded as a pressing priority in the 1950s, while listing reached a much wider audience in the 1960s. The newly rebranded International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) established the Survival Service as a permanent commission in 1956 led by the retired army officer Charles Leofrick Boyle.40 Boyle started a card index of endangered species which included thirty-four mammals and was reprinted in the proceedings of the IUCN’s Seventh General Assembly.41 By the end of the decade, the Lake Success list of mammals had swollen to twenty-six species including the addition of the Arabian oryx, Angolan giraffe, Sumatran rhinoceros, and Black-footed ferret. During the 1960s, the Survival Service’s card index was published as a series of Red Data Books with support from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Lee Talbot’s report, A Look at Threatened Species (1960), fanned enthusiasm for publicly accessible reports on endangered species.42 Published by the Fauna Preservation Society, the report provided biographies of endangered species illustrated by images and maps, alongside geographical essays surveying the fauna of the Middle East and Asia. Coolidge’s foreword placed Talbot’s report as the latest offspring in a lineage that had begun under the auspices of the American Committee for International Wild Life Protection and the meetings at Lake Success. Shortly after, between 1960 and 1962, Boyle transferred his card index to typed sheets in a red binder titled Animals and Plants Threatened with Extinction.43 Intended for specialists, fewer than fifty copies were produced and most no longer survive.

When Peter Scott took over the reins of the Survival Service in 1963, he colour-coded the lists and led efforts to broaden their coverage and reach the public. A founding member of the WWF and son of the explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Peter Scott hit upon the idea of red colour-coding to signal danger. He kept personal notes from the Survival Service’s card index in notebooks, including a ‘Red Book’ on endangered species.44 Within five years of its founding in 1961, the WWF raised $1.9 million which it used to support international conservation projects, including the IUCN’s development of the Red List.45 Scott’s Red Book was developed for internal use, but strong external demand promoted a new approach. In 1964 updated versions of the card index of mammals and a list of birds prepared by the International Council for Bird Preservation were published in the IUCN Bulletin. With a readership of roughly 10,000, these lists reached an unprecedentedly broad readership and are now recognized as the first official Red Lists.46 The first Red Data Books, volume one on mammals and volume two on birds, were published in 1966.47 Initially, a thousand copies were produced and nearly all were sold within three years.48 The original Red Data Books were intended for specialists, but Scott enthusiastically supported mass-market publications. The hugely popular The Red Book: Wildlife in Danger (1969) soon followed and sold 35,000 copies in Europe and the United States within months.49 Looking back on their publication just eight years later, one reviewer was clear about their impact: ‘Quickly the RDBs became Holy Writ in this field.’50

The first Red Data Books were custom-printed ring binders containing loose-leaf sheets organized with plastic dividers. They were chosen to allow routine updates: readers were expected to remove and destroy out-of-date sheets, to replace them with new reports. The cycle of destruction and updates means no one is certain whether copies of the original Red Data Books with only, or at least all, the original sheets still exist. The historian Jon Agar believes the original Red Data Books might be the rarest scientific books of the twentieth century.51 The sheets were also colour-coded: pink for those species in the greatest peril and green for species with improving outlooks. Reviewers were generally positive about the technical benefits, but wrote in surprisingly emotional terms about their use. While reviewing the volumes on mammals and birds, one ecologist and keen birder was moved by the ‘regrettable pink tinge to the edges of the book when closed’ and ‘happily’ noted the ‘few green pages’. As new sheets were added, he hoped ‘a greenish tinge will appear on the edge of each volume’.52 Another reviewer regarded the colour-coding as a great saga: ‘here a small triumph for the conservationist, a more optimistic note about the possibilities of ensuring survival; there, alas more often, a setback to record, or even the final closing of accounts and transfer of the creature to a black sheet In Memoriam’.53 James Fisher, who edited the popular version of the Red List, noted that the Survival Service had another list: ‘Black for death, or rather extinction.’ 54 The Black List was the cumulative knowledge created by notices of species known or believed to be extinct since 1600 in the IUCN Bulletin. One reader fervently hoped that publishing lists would finally convince others of the true extent of ‘the crimes of genocide against man’s environment and the state of the combat against them, hitherto drily hidden in official communiqués’.55 Public education and mass-market versions of the Red Data Books were a crucial element of early conservationists’ campaigns as public awareness and support could not be taken for granted.

The original card indexes were replaced by electronic databases in the 1970s. Staff were trained to use computers in the IUCN headquarters at Morges, Switzerland, in 1976.56 Two years later, the ring binders and loose sheets were replaced with bound volumes. The first bound Red Data Books listed plants, quickly followed by another on birds.57 The Survival Service appointed the biologist Jane Thornback to set up the Species Conservation Monitoring Unit in Cambridge, England, just as the computers were installed. She led on the compilation and publication of a series of regional Red Data Books.58 The introduction of bound volumes, regional publications, and computerized databases were all important shifts for the Survival Service as they made Red Data Books available to a much wider audience than the original card indexes.

The first Red Lists were arranged by taxonomic categories such as Order, Family, Genus, and Species.59 When published as Red Data Books, the lists of species were also divided into four categories based on perceived threat, including:

1 Very rare and believed to be decreasing in numbers.

2 Less rare but believed to be threatened – requires watching.

3 Very rare but believed to be stable or increasing.

4 Status inadequately known – survey required or data sought.60

In addition, species and subspecies were assigned a starred listing:

***   Giving cause for very grave anxiety.

**     Giving cause for considerable anxiety.

*       Giving cause for some anxiety.61

Perhaps the most intriguing sheet was dedicated to the thylacine and printed on a pink sheet and rated ‘1(a)***p’. This denoted (a) a ‘full species’ that was (1) ‘very rare and believed to be decreasing in numbers and (***) cause for ‘very grave anxiety’, but (p) ‘legally protected, at least in some parts of its range’.62 The criteria were quickly amended to make them more comprehensive for the second volume on birds in which a fifth category was added: ‘5 depleted = severely reduced in abundance and still decreasing’.63 Qualitative criteria are not inherently inaccurate or undesirable, but conservationists’ concerns about applying these criteria accurately and consistently ruffled feathers.

Endangerment was recategorized in quantitative terms in the 1980s. The recently renamed Species Survival Commission met in Madrid in 1984 to consider new approaches to defining endangerment.64 Attendees felt listing was useful, but they wanted more precise terminology for signalling degrees of threat to remove subjective inconsistencies.65 The Commission asked the evolutionary ecologist Georgina Mace in April 1989 to develop proposals for redefining endangerment. A researcher based at London Zoo exploring how genetics could be used to manage wildlife, Mace took on the challenge early in her career.66 She produced a draft system using three categories – Extinct, Endangered, and Vulnerable – and defined an endangered species as ‘those that are estimated to have at least a 10% chance of going extinct in the next 100 years if current conditions prevail’.67 A few months later she was joined by Russell Lande, an established scholar whose research used quantitative studies of genes to explore large-scale problems in evolution, such as natural selection, sexual selection, inbreeding, and extinction.

Mace and Lande proposed overhauling the categories of threatened species in a landmark scientific article. Published in 1991, their paper ‘Assessing Extinction Threats’ incorporated emerging ideas in population ecology to provide the most radical overhaul of the Red List categories in decades. Biologists increasingly hypothesized that species needed a minimum viable population to survive, determined by a population viability analysis, to determine the true health of a population. One of the most famous rules of thumb was the 50/500 rule based on the proposal that a species required a minimum population of 50 to survive without inbreeding, but a population of 500 was needed to ensure genetic variability and long-term survival.68 Mace and Lande proposed four quantitative categories:

Extinct species

Critical species, defined as those with a ‘50% probability of extinction within 5 years or 2 generations’, and a population of less than 250

Endangered species, defined as those with a ‘20% probability of extinction within 20 years or 10 generations’, and a population of less than 2,500

Vulnerable species, defined as those with a ‘10% probability of extinction within a hundred years’, and a population of less than 10,000.69

Recognizing that a universally applicable metrics system was probably impossible, the team still recommended their system as suitable for mammals, birds, and reptiles. The Mace-Lande criteria were redrafted numerous times in response to criticism and feedback, with the final criteria adopted in 1994.70 The 1996 Red List of Threatened Animals was the first to use the new categories.71 Listing gained an even stronger foothold when the IUCN established a dedicated Red List Unit and shifted to producing an electronic version in 1998. Going digital made listing an even bigger global endeavour.

In the new millennium, the Red Data Books were replaced by Red Lists in an ambitious strategy to catalogue a phenomenon increasingly called a ‘biodiversity crisis’ or ‘extinction crisis’.72 The 2000 IUCN List of Threatened Species was the first publicly available online Red List.73 Released on the IUCN’s website, the new Red List unified the work of the Species Survival Commission into a searchable database and sealed the fate of printed Red Data Books. Instead of publishing hard copies of the Red List, the IUCN now publishes analyses of the latest developments, from newly defined extinctions to success stories about recovery. In 2010 the United Nations launched an International Year of Biodiversity and the IUCN launched an ambitious strategic plan to make the Red List into a ‘Barometer of Life’ over the next decade.74 The IUCN aimed to expand the Red List’s coverage from 48,000 species to 160,000 species, increase the number of trained experts conducting classification, and increase the rate at which new species were included. By the end of the decade, the IUCN Red lists covered 134,400 species, with the numbers growing constantly as the IUCN aims to establish the Red List as a ‘Barometer of Life’ – one to complement the Encyclopedia of Life, an attempt to classify every known species.

Living in the Red, Surviving in the Green

The Red List is a vast compendium of species amassed in just a few decades, but what might it mean for the Red List to serve as a barometer of life? Biologists currently recognize 1.9 million living species and 250,000 fossil species, but the most widely used estimate for the total number of species stands at 8.75 million. By 2024 the Red List included 163,040 species, with the goal of expanding to 260,000.75 Assessing the remainder requires vast funds, and the IUCN encourages people to donate money to help complete the Red List. The current Red List covers a fraction of known species: these include all known mammals, birds, and amphibians, but other kinds such as fish, insects, plants, fungi, and microbes are woefully under-represented.76 The uneven coverage is partly the historical legacy of early lists focusing on mammals and birds, but it also reflects which species conservationists regard as charismatic, interesting, or important. The IUCN’s decade-long push to train more evaluators and improve the rate at which species were added to the Red List has attempted to remedy this situation, but many species have not been fully assessed or remain unlisted.

The Red List’s comprehensiveness matters far beyond the pleasure of a finished task. Early conservationists working in the Survival Service proved remarkably effective at establishing listing species as a conservation tool with relevance to policy-making. Once governments used lists to allocate resources for conservation or protect species against hunting, trade, and other threats, inclusion effectively demarcated between lives worth protecting and those whose loss would be regrettable, but allowable.77 Listing creates other unintended consequences. Despite the best efforts of global wildlife regulators, illegal trade and trafficking remain rampant, and are estimated to be outdone in value only by the drug trade. On the multi-billion-dollar black market, trade bans and listing can enhance the desirability of a species precisely because they provide official recognition of endangerment and, in turn, rarity.78 Rhino horns, elephant ivory, and tiger parts are perhaps the best-known examples of illegal commodities whose value rises with increased rarity. Rhino horns are so sought after that museums with stuffed rhinos frequently replace their horns with synthetic substitutes to deter thieves.79 Given the limited nature of conservation resources, listing inevitably privileges certain species for protection, but it can also create new targets for traffickers.

The IUCN aims to make the Red List into a continuous assessment of extinction threats.80 The current Red List arranges species along a spectrum of threat of loss: species are categorized as Not Evaluated, Data Deficient, Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild, and Extinct. Potentially every species might be included, for even the most unfamiliar might be tagged as ‘Not Evaluated’ with an implicit call for further investigations to be reclassified into another category. Meanwhile, tracking threat is so ingrained in the Red List that there is no category indicating safety: the best possible outlook for an evaluated species is of ‘Least Concern’. What does this mean for the lives most thoroughly catalogued by the Red List? All known mammals, birds, and amphibians are listed, meaning they have already been incorporated into a state of living in the Red. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a species with an enormous ego, self-evaluating Homo sapiens is listed as of ‘Least Concern’. Homo sapiens is the only species to list itself. Our egotism and propensity for destruction might eventually trigger our self-annihilation but, for now, our future is rosier than many species eking out slow deaths in captivity, such as the Hawaiian crow or the last two northern white rhinos.

The IUCN has developed a ‘Green Status’ to track species recovery rates and complement the Red List. In 2012 the IUCN held a World Conservation Congress in Jeju, Republic of Korea. Delegates wanted to build on the success of the Red List in assessing ‘extinction risk’ by developing an additional measure for recovery and celebrate success stories whether of protected areas, ecosystems, or species. After years of debating the criteria for assessment, in 2017 the IUCN developed a global standard for listing protected areas. Red List assessors were able to include the ‘Green Status’ of species as an optional element from 2020. The Green Status currently categorizes species into: ‘indeterminate’, ‘non-depleted’, ‘fully recovered’, ‘slightly depleted’, ‘moderately depleted’, ‘largely depleted’, ‘critically depleted’, and ‘extinct in the wild’, based on calculations of a species rate of recovery.81 By 2024 thirty-eight species were listed with a Green Status. These include success stories such as the saiga antelope and Iberian lynx, whose populations are increasing, or the pink pigeon and alpine ibex whose numbers are stable. The Green Status echoes the Red Lists’ categories, creating a spectrum of existence from Black, or ‘extinct’, to living in the Red in varying degrees of threat, to Green and perhaps thriving to the point of being ‘fully recovered’. Meanwhile, the inclusion of mathematical criteria for expressing species recovery builds on the legacy of Mace and Lande, who incorporated theories of population ecology into listing.

One promising candidate for demonstrating recovery is the whooping crane, which was included on the first lists of threatened species produced at Lake Success. Whooping cranes are tall white migratory birds, with a distinct red crown, black forehead, and distinctive sweep of black curving around the eye and onto the lower jaw, and wings tipped with black. The bird was once native to Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Ornithologists estimate there was a historical population of more than 10,000 whooping cranes before the colonization of the Americas, which dropped to a couple of thousand by the start of European settlement. Although notional, these figures suggest an uncommon bird whose numbers quickly plummeted in the later nineteenth century to about 1,300–1,400 whooping cranes by the 1870s as they lost their habitat to farmers and their lives to hunters. Their increased rarity made them especially valuable to commercial hunters, collectors, and curators. By 1939, only fourteen whooping cranes were known to exist, all living on the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, founded in Texas in 1937. In the late 1940s, the US Fish and Wildlife Service tried to establish the species’ migratory patterns so that nesting sites could be identified. A service employee serendipitously identified nesting sites in Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada, in 1954. Meanwhile, whooping-crane numbers fluctuated with modest breeding success and fifty-six birds were living on the refuge by 1970, and nearly 150 by 1990.82

Whooping cranes were saved from extinction through extraordinary efforts from the 1960s onwards. The US Fish and Wildlife Service tried to establish a flock of whooping cranes in captivity by taking one egg from nests in the wild, leaving at least one or more eggs, and using sandhill cranes as surrogate parents in the 1960s, with a second flock established in the 1990s. Unfortunately, the flocks never reached more than a few dozen and the captive birds were all dead by 2002. Further efforts to establish a flock of captive birds that were not free to migrate achieved modest success from the 1990s, but conservationists’ efforts turned towards training captive whooping cranes in the behaviours they needed to live as closely as possible to their wild kin. Newly hatched birds often form a special attachment to their mothers, known as imprinting. The process is innate and the precise details vary: hatchlings can imprint on the first object they see, or the first thing to move or make a sound around them. To avoid chicks imprinting on humans, carers wore costumes to mimic adult cranes and were silent around the birds. The young whooping cranes were also socialized by sandhill cranes, and taught migratory routes by a pilot in crane costume flying an aircraft with the whooping cranes between 1997 and 2015. These strategies were intended to teach the birds behaviours they would have learned from their parents in order to establish a self-sustaining stock of birds outside captivity. As the ecologist and historian Laura Martin observes, these birds were ‘wild by design’.83 By 2020, 483 whooping cranes were counted living in the wild, but they still face perilous journeys across landscapes dotted with power lines, or hunters with loaded rifles.84 In spite of these trials, the whooping cranes living and migrating between Texas and Canada appear to be sustaining their ways of being, raising hopes that they might eventually thrive again.

In the later nineteenth century, geologists’ ideas about pervasive extinctions in the natural world were soon accompanied by naturalists’ concerns for vanishing species. Naturalists and colonial officials warned of the impending extinction of colonized peoples long before they conceived of species as subject to the same threats. Naturalists and hunters bore witness to declining populations of numerous species in multiple ways. Biologists and collectors on scientific expeditions found capturing specimens, from gorillas to migratory birds, increasingly difficult.85 We might expect rarity to trigger protective measures, but museum curators or naturalists were more likely to hunt, and collect, specimens to ensure continued access. Rarity often made species far more valuable, and therefore profitable, to the commercial collectors who tracked down and sold the last of their kinds to acquisitive naturalists, as in the case of the great auk. As naturalists accumulated evidence of extinctions in living memory, from Steller’s sea cow to the great auk, they feared many other species were on the brink of extermination. Naturalists, especially Alfred Newton, added the possibility of unnatural extinctions to the widely known reality of natural extinctions in life’s great drama. By the later nineteenth century, naturalists developed the new category of vanishing species and their understanding of extinction as a process that could be quickened, stalled, or stopped through humanity’s interventions, from wanton slaughter to preservation.

Concerns about vanishing species underpinned new forms of wildlife protection in the post-war world. Conservationists forged new career paths as they helped establish non-governmental organizations dedicated to wildlife protection, such as the forerunners of the IUCN. In this context, listing emerged as one of the most important, and favoured, tools to count and classify vanishing species. Reading the first lists drawn up by the IUPN at Lake Success in 1948, readers might recognize a variety of fates. The Caribbean monk seal was extinct within four years of its listing. The Tasmanian wolf, or thylacine, was listed twelve years after the last known endling died. The American whooping crane and North American bison were pulled back from the brink, but many of the species remain threatened despite decades of warnings.

Listing has blossomed into a gargantuan international initiative with the Red List firmly established as a ‘barometer of life’. Campaigners for modern nature protection could have chosen to protect threatened habitats or landscapes, or selected broader taxonomic categories, such as Order or Family, but they chose species.86 Species remain privileged in how we identify, and protect, threatened lives. Originally, species were most likely to capture the attention of conservationists if they were furry or feathered. This historical bias towards mammals and birds remains despite conservationists’ efforts to expand the coverage of the Red List. The philosophical peculiarities of the Red List have recently shifted with the adoption of the Green Status for measuring species recovery. Originally, assessed species could only live in the Red and the best-case scenario for even the most abundant species, such as humans, was being classified as of ‘Least Concern’. The IUCN has now allowed for the possibility of recovering, and even thriving, in the Green, paving the way for a significant, and welcome, philosophical and practical revolution. Yet, the Green Status has further entrenched our focus on species, and listing as a surveillance tool, and degrees of threat as the most common way of allocating resources. Listing is a political act that never produced a neutral inventory of endangered lives. From its inception, listing was the outcome of countless political and philosophical choices that reveal how we imagine our relationship to other ways of being, and whose ways of being we allow to wither, and whose we value enough to defend and, perhaps, save.

7.

Catastrophe Strikes

One day, 66 million years ago, spawning fish, blossoming lilies, and unsuspecting dinosaurs were wiped out by a 7-kilometre-wide rock smashing into the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. The ferocious speed, intensity, and heat of the impact vaporized the rock in less than a second and tore into the earth’s crust, leaving a crater about 40 kilometres across. Within a couple of seconds, the shockwave blasted underlying rocks into the air and the crater widened to between 150 and 200 kilometres. The furious heat melted rock into glass droplets. They vaporized and cooled on contact with air, forming billions of miniature glass spheres blasted into the air alongside dust and debris. Life inside the crater was instantly annihilated. The impact triggered tsunamis in the nearby Gulf of Mexico. Intense tidal waves engulfed the coastline, forcing water inland for hundreds of kilometres through waterways connected to the coast. A fireball soon ripped across the land sterilizing it of life. Within hours, the impact’s energy transformed countless ways of being into fragmented debris strewn across North America and the Caribbean. Over the next few days, winds encircled earth’s northern hemisphere in lethal dust, blotting out the sun’s warmth and light for months.1 Many lives were lost on contact, while other creatures slowly suffocated or starved in the charred aftermath. Only the smallest creatures survived, eventually giving rise to birds and mammals.

Geologists and palaeontologists knew almost nothing about this calamity until remarkably recently. They knew some species suddenly vanished from the fossil record, such as trilobites at the end of the Permian Period (251.9 million years ago) – the largest extinction event in earth’s history – and dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period (66 million years ago). Nevertheless, they were far more likely to be interested in calculating the age of the earth, or investigating the formation of geological wonders such as coral reefs and mountain ranges, than oddities such as disappearing species. When Georges Cuvier claimed that some species no longer existed, he believed that past catastrophes might be the cause, but his peers and successors dismissed tumultuous disasters as the cause of extinctions. Instead, generations of geologists were trained to theorize earth’s history as an achingly slow development. In the 1980s shocking theories about the death of the dinosaurs and other species in mass extinctions changed the attitudes of palaeontologists and geologists to catastrophic change. As geologists reimagined the history of our planet and life’s evolution, the broader public were captivated and alarmed by the possibility that we might have triggered a mass extinction in the present day.

Slow Formations

As a young man, Charles Darwin voyaged around the world aboard HMS Beagle. He set sail from Plymouth docks the day after Boxing Day in 1831. Captain Robert Fitzroy and the crew were tasked with surveying the coasts of South America, to measure longitude, observe weather conditions, and map coral reefs to make maritime navigation substantially safer for British sailors. Darwin observed the volcanic mountain ranges of Cape Verde, tropical forests of South America, craggy islands and subtly varying finches of the Galapagos, marsupials of Hobart and Sydney, coral reefs in the Pacific and Indian oceans from Tahiti to Mauritius, and from the Cape of Good Hope to the Azores.2 He returned to Falmouth in chilly October five years later and wended his way home to Kent, where he lived in relative seclusion with his wife Emma and their children. Ensconced in his library, he continued reading voraciously and relied on an extraordinary correspondence network with experts for scientific information.3 Darwin was especially influenced by Charles Lyell’s recent masterpiece Principles of Geology (1830–3). Many of their peers believed the earth was no more than a few thousand years old and relied on catastrophes to explain how mountains or the continents formed in the geological blink of an eye. Lyell contended that the earth’s most spectacular geological features, from volcanoes to glaciers, were formed by almost imperceptible forces, such as the movement of the earth’s surface and fluctuating seas. Such slow forces required time to act, so Lyell reasoned that earth’s history must stretch deep into unknown pasts.4 Darwin deliberated over the origins of geological formations and species with Lyell’s gift of near unlimited time.

Most naturalists regarded species as immutable natural kinds, but Darwin grew doubtful. He suspected that individuals of a species better suited for prevailing conditions were more likely to survive and leave descendants. Over countless generations, minute modifications accumulated in a species, which improved the chances of its survival. Ultimately, he developed his theory that ‘descent with modification’ created new species better adapted for survival through a process he called natural selection.5 Upon publication of his ideas, Darwin benefited from decades of debates about whether species could ‘transmute’, or ‘develop’. While many readers were shocked by his ideas about natural selection, his broader ideas about evolution were easily incorporated into a developmental story about life’s progress by geologists and theologians. A younger generation of biologists adopted Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection, but many peers did not regard it as essential to evolutionary change. When biologists identified genes as the building blocks of inheritance in the twentieth century, natural selection allowed them to model the inheritance of genes in populations. This ‘modern synthesis’ helped pave the way for a new consensus that life on earth evolved through natural selection, and embedded evolution and extinction into life’s history.6

Darwin imagined extinction as the necessary by-product of natural selection. In his view, living beings better adapted to any set of conditions would successfully compete for resources and reproduce. Over time, if any descendants were better suited to those conditions, no matter how minutely, they would survive, thrive, and ‘continually take the places of and exterminate their parent-forms’. Darwin knew that curious readers were likely to ask about transitional forms in the geological record. This created a significant dilemma because he knew of none. This apparent absence created the ‘gravest objection which can be urged against my theory’.7 In his defence, he likened the fossil record to a tatty book:

I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly-changing language, in which the history is supposed to be written, being more or less different in the interrupted succession of chapters, may represent the apparently abruptly changed forms of life, entombed in our consecutive, but widely separated formations.8

When fossils of Archaeopteryx were found in Germany in 1861, they finally provided a transitional form from dinosaurs to birds, but this was hardly enough to lay doubt to rest. Darwin knew of ‘the apparently sudden extermination of whole families or orders’, such as trilobites and ammonites, in the fossil record, and inferred that the best explanation was imperfection of the fossil record.9 His metaphor of the shabby, torn book prompted geologists to shun catastrophic explanations for evolutionary change for over a century.

Periodic Calamities

Palaeontologists routinely assumed that the fossil record provided no meaningful evidence of evolutionary processes, and evolutionary biologists commonly dismissed mass extinctions as evolutionarily irrelevant until after the Second World War.10 As the world grappled with the genocidal horrors of the war, one palaeontologist’s misgivings grew. In the 1950s, the American geologist Norman D. Newell urged geologists to recognize that the fossil record was far more reliable than they assumed. Determined to understand rapid change in the geological record, he tracked the appearance and disappearance of genera such as corals, trilobites, and ammonites. When he produced timelines comparing the origins and deaths of marine genera, he noticed numerous precipitous declines in life’s diversity coinciding with the end of several geological periods. Instead of dismissing these as artefacts caused by an unreliable data set, he ventured into unfamiliar territory. He suggested that life on earth experienced periodic ‘wholesale extinctions’ caused by catastrophic events, such as seas receding from continental land masses.11 Writing for Scientific American in the early 1960s, Newell predicted: ‘If we may judge from the fossil record, eventual extinction seems to be the lot of all organisms’, with the cause of mass extinctions remaining a ‘major problem of evolutionary history’.12

Newell’s research provided the strongest evidence that abrupt losses in the geological record were reliable signals. Hypothesizing that mass extinctions were observable phenomena challenged disciplinary caution. Newell’s ideas helped to establish mass extinction and catastrophic causes as legitimately useful subjects for geological research and encouraged others to devote their careers to understanding the nature of extinction. Newell’s graduate students were initially exasperated by these irritating diversions from evolution. The American palaeontologist Niles Eldredge recalls ‘as acolytes’ in Newell’s ‘graduate student seminars, we used to despair of hearing Norman discuss evolution. Extinction to us was the “down side” – we wanted to talk about evolution!’13 The American historian of palaeobiology David Sepkoski suggests that Newell’s research contributed to a revolution that established palaeobiology as a distinctive and important field in its own right between the 1950s and 1980s. This stimulated research into the nature of extinction. In the 1970s, a new generation of scientists asked where, when, and how often did mass extinctions occur? Was it possible to distinguish between an imperfect geological record and meaningful loss? Might mathematical models yield new ways of understanding the fossil record? By pursuing these questions, palaeobiologists reconceptualized extinction as an independent evolutionary phenomenon. Eldredge notes of Newell’s legacy: ‘Norman’s focus on mass extinction may well prove to be his most lasting gift to us all.’14

Niles Eldredge was among the new generation in the 1970s who helped reinterpret the geological record in terms of rapid change. For his doctoral dissertation in the 1960s he explored the evolution of trilobites, concentrating on the species Phacops rana, once widespread around 380 million years ago (Fig. 7.1). After collecting his specimens, Eldredge grew concerned as his trilobites did not appear to be evolving, but he soon noticed that their eyes told a different story. Phacops rana has distinctive large eyes made from numerous compound lenses, and the number of those lenses did change. As Eldredge explored the eyes, he noticed that the species existed for long periods with the number of compound lenses making up the eyes changing suddenly. This pattern was completely unexpected according to the traditional model of slow, iterative evolutionary change. Eldredge collaborated with the American palaeobiologist Stephen J. Gould, now fondly remembered as a well-known popular scientific writer. In a paper published in 1972, the pair argued that scientists were too wedded to visions of gradual evolution and that species often survived in stable states for long periods, but then evolved in rapid bursts, as with the trilobites. Their radical new theory of ‘punctuated equilibria’ was deeply controversial, but it forced palaeobiologists to reconsider the possibility of rapid changes in the geological record as meaningful signals, not misleading anomalies.15

7.1 A fossil of the Devonian trilobite Phacops rana.

In the same year, John ‘Jack’ Sepkoski was studying evolution at Harvard University with luminaries such as Stephen Jay Gould and Edward O. Wilson, a biologist whose stellar reputation rested on his theories about species evolution on islands. Within four years, Sepkoski met David Raup, a geologist with considerable expertise in extinction and mathematical modelling. Biologists classify species into a hierarchical system of increasingly specific categories until they reach a distinctive name: each name designates a species, which also belongs to a genus, family, order, class, phylum, and kingdom. The geological record rarely provides sufficient data to analyse the past history of species, but is significantly more reliable for broader categories. Sepkoski tried to pinpoint the origins of families. Choosing families as the basic unit for tracking evolution made it significantly easier to harvest reliable information and spot larger evolutionary patterns.

Jack Sepkoski realized that extant datasets barely addressed millions of years of evolutionary change. Modern geologists divide life on earth into four eons: the Hadean (from 4.6 billion years ago) witnessed the earth’s formation; the earth cooled enough for the formation of continents and the earliest signs of life during the Archean (from 4 billion years ago); simple bacteria, algae, and jellyfish emerged in the Proterozoic (from 2.5 billion years ago); finally, the Phanerozoic, spanning the last 541 million years, included the emergence of invertebrate animals, early bony fish, the earliest land animals, the first plants with seeds, and eventually the emergence of insects, birds, dinosaurs, mammals, and humans. Sepkoski kept track of the origins and disappearance of families within the Phanerozoic in notebooks during the 1970s. He hoped his data might illuminate global patterns of life’s diversification from the earliest organisms. Sepkoski and Raup collaborated on a paper published in Nature in 1981 that argued Sepkoski’s data represented ‘a strong evolutionary signal’ of increased biodiversity in marine families.16 Building on this important defence of the fossil record’s reliability, they repurposed Sepkoski’s data for 3,300 marine families, including 2,400 extinct lineages, to study extinction. When they used the data to track extinction rates for families against time for the entire Phanerozoic, they noticed five large drops in the number of families. They quickly wrote a paper, published by Science, which proposed that life on earth experienced five mass extinctions.17 Their identification of five mass extinctions changed how we understand our past, and present.

Mass extinctions signpost the history of life on earth. Early geologists used vanished species to mark breaks between periods in the fossil record, making it easy to align new theories of mass extinction with much older practices of defining geological boundaries. When Georges Cuvier first claimed extinct beasts were eradicated by unknown catastrophes, the principle of extinction was quickly embedded within geological theories, but his explanation for their loss faded into obscurity. Generations of geologists regarded catastrophism as a joke. Raup and Sepkoski’s publications provided the clearest evidence that mass extinctions were tangible events of evolutionary significance. Throughout the 1970s palaeobiologists were already divided into two camps: one group hoped to create idealized mathematical laws to describe life’s evolution, while the other group hoped to incorporate more literal readings of the fossil record into geological research, and included important figures such as Stephen Jay Gould and Raup. Identifying mass extinctions helped Raup and Sepkoski create fruitful new avenues for combining ideas about random events, selective pressures, and empirical evidence from the fossil record.18 In doing so, they established catastrophic extinctions as momentous geological events that permanently changed lifeways.

We are all stardust, and survivors of the Great Dying. Geologists believe that every living being is descended from the mere tenth of species that survived previous mass extinctions. About 444 million years ago, the first mass extinction caused the deaths of approximately 85 per cent of marine life at the end of the Ordovician. About 372 million years ago, the second mass extinction also caused widespread loss of 75 per cent of marine life in the late Devonian. The third mass extinction proved the deadliest at the end of the Permian, 252 million years ago, known as the Great Dying when at least 90 per cent of species went extinct. While land dwellers lost 70 per cent of their species, marine species bore the brunt of the loss. The fourth mass extinction caused the loss of 80 per cent of life at the end of the Triassic about 201 million years ago. Many mammals died out, but the dinosaurs, which originated in the Triassic, flourished during the subsequent Jurassic. The dinosaurs were wiped out in the fifth mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period, which killed off 50 per cent of all species 66 million years ago.19 Higher death rates leave a smaller pool of species to live on, slowing down life’s rate of recovery in the aftermath. When encountering mass extinction and its consequences, many of us understandably worry about a future calamity that might wipe out all life. Yet life has always persisted after such catastrophes and flourished into new ways of being, including our own.20

In the Asteroid’s Wake

Doomed dinosaurs are the most famous marker of any mass-extinction event, well known to us through museums, novels, soft toys, memes, and Hollywood blockbusters. Their cultural ubiquity emerged alongside new ideas about mass extinction in the 1980s. The demise of the prehistoric, lizard-like monsters was well known in the nineteenth century, but the cause of their extinction attracted little attention.21 In the twentieth century, a slew of papers tackled the mystery, with suggestions ranging from plausible scenarios to fanciful guesses. As late as 1963, Norman Newell noted, ‘If mass extinctions were not brought about by changes in atmospheric oxygen, by disease, by cosmic radiation, by trace-element poisoning, by climatic changes or by violent upheavals of the Earth’s crust, where is one to look for a satisfactory – and testable – hypothesis?’22 Seventeen years later, an infamous paper ignited bitter controversies over the answer.

The Apennine mountains stretch along the length of Italy, but their stratigraphy is peculiarly exposed in the lower slopes near the medieval Umbrian town of Gubbio.23 There, reddish limestone known as Scaglia rossa brims with tiny, often microscopic, intricate shells of fossilized plankton called foraminifera, or forams. These past sea-dwellers allow geologists to date rocks and observe changes in earth’s magnetic field. During summer fieldwork in the late 1970s, as the American geologist Walter Alvarez chipped away at these rocks he noticed that the forams were abundant during the late Cretaceous deposits, above which there was a centimetre-thick layer of clay with few fossils, and then a new tertiary layer where the forams were almost extinct.24 He suspected that the rocks preserved an unbroken record of the transition from the end of the Cretaceous Period to the start of the Paleogene Period (or the K-Pg transition, 66 million years ago). Alvarez hoped the site would yield insights into bigger mysteries, because the forams vanished at the same time as dinosaurs, and rocks spanning the K-Pg transition were then unknown. Intrigued, he worried over the clay layer in conversation, then collaboration, with his father, Luis Alvarez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968.

Walter and Luis were keen to date the clay layer: the quicker it formed, the earlier the forams died out. Unfortunately, thickness is an unreliable guide to the rate of formation, so they needed an alternative means of measuring time. Luis suggested using radioactivity as a molecular clock. Radioactive elements decay at known rates, measured in half-lives, or the time it takes for half a given quantity of an element to lose its radioactivity. Comparing traces of radioactivity in rocks or organic matter to naturally occurring levels of those elements allows scientists to date materials. The most promising element seemed to be iridium. In 1977 they asked the chemist Frank Asaro to analyse samples of the Gubbio clay for iridium. Expecting only to find traces of around one part per billion, Asaro found nine parts per billion. This infinitesimal number was still thirty times more than the 0.3 parts per billion in the layers below the clay. Was the spike an anomaly, or a meaningful exception? The pair might easily have dismissed using iridium as a molecular clock, or argued that the clay layer must have taken thirty times as long as the lower layers to be deposited, but they worried over its exceptional concentration. Iridium is nearly absent in the earth’s crust, but highly concentrated in the meteor dust constantly showering us with cosmic rain. Was the iridium extraterrestrial? The team searched for other sites spanning the K-Pg transition, and eventually found another dark clay layer in the white chalk of Stevns Klint cliffs near Copenhagen in Denmark. Asaro found another iridium spike in the Danish samples. The team expanded to include the chemist Helen V. Michel, and they continued taking measurements as they reflected on possible causes, before finding another iridium spike in Woodside Creek on South Island in New Zealand.

Science published the team’s bombshell in 1980. They proposed that the most likely cause of dinosaur extinction was a 10-kilometre-wide asteroid smashing into earth, creating a 200-kilometre-wide crater, which ejected dust plumes into the air that encircled the globe, darkened the skies, stopped plants photosynthesizing thereby causing the collapse of food chains and, finally, the death of the dinosaurs.25 Luis Alvarez modelled the sequence of explosion, dust clouds, and death on the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. The violent blast in Indonesia was heard as far away as Australia, and volleyed so much ash into the skies that London’s artists spent months painting exceptionally vivid red sunsets. The eruption might even have been the source of the bloody painted sky in Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream (1893).26 Luis suspected that the eruption provided a useful model for the aftermath of a giant asteroid strike. The team finished the paper by urging colleagues to find the impact crater and making the grand claim that other asteroid impacts might also have caused mass extinctions.27 Newspapers circulated the sensational theory around the world. Some reporters dutifully noted yet another theory for the death of the dinosaurs. Others conjured more lurid scenarios of death and destruction. The Boston Globe vaguely claimed ‘Long ago, something happened’, while the Christian Science Monitor derided the Alvarez team for founding ‘fantasies’ on a mere ‘bit of space debris’. The New York Times ran a series of articles exploring the asteroid impact as one theory among many, such as volcanic eruptions, debated by the world’s dinosaur experts. Beyond the details of the hypothesis, the press attention created widespread interest in the dinosaurs and the broader phenomena of mass extinctions.28

Geologists were convinced the Alvarez team was wrong. David Raup, who worked with John ‘Jack’ Sepkoski on mass extinctions, peer-viewed the paper before publication. He made several suggestions for improvement, but warned:

The potential impact of this paper has cosmic proportions. If the hypothesis is correct, it will have profound influence on geology and evolution – not to mention philosophy. The paper will probably change the basic thinking of many people. This is fine if the hypothesis is correct. But if it turns out (later) to be wrong, a lot of damage will have been done and it will take years to recover.29

Raup rejected the paper as ‘sloppy and incomplete, however brilliant’.30 His misgivings were echoed by many scientists upon publication; years later, he recalled the paper’s publication ‘was met with nearly universal derision’.31 Objections included the lack of palaeontological expertise among the Alvarez team, a lack of evidence for the asteroid strike and subsequent dust clouds, questioning the presence of iridium in stratigraphical sections not at the K-Pg boundary, and general suspicion of any appeals to catastrophic and extra-terrestrial causes.32

Incredulous palaeontologists were infuriated by the Alvarez team’s audacity in stepping so far beyond their disciplinary expertise. The New York Times regularly updated readers about the twists and turns in the debates. Despite widespread scepticism, sympathetic readers started testing the Alvarez team’s predictions. Testing meant the paper was not dismissed as quickly as previous catastrophic musings. In just over a decade, nearly a thousand times more iridium than the average concentrations in earth’s crust was found at more than a hundred sites.33 The impact site eluded scientists until a team led by the geologist Alan R. Hildebrand found the ‘largest probable impact crater on earth’ in 1991.34 Buried under the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, the dimensions of the 180-kilometre-wide Chicxulub crater were remarkably consistent with the predicted 10-kilometre-wide asteroid. Subsequent research confirmed the crater is 66 million years old and the epicentre of the dinosaurs’ demise.

As news of the crater circulated globally, scientists, historians, philosophers, and sociologists attended a conference near Chicago about the mass-extinction controversies. In conference proceedings, the American geologist and historian William Glen felt it was difficult to ‘overstate’ the effects of the Alvarez paper:

The past 13 years have seen the publication of more than two and half thousand papers and books touching on various aspects of the controversy, and the tide of publications continues to rise. Career goals have been refocused, dormant areas of research rejuvenated, tacit assumptions hastily re-examined, and scientists in widely separated fields swept into an unprecedented array of collaborative efforts. Ingenious experiments, field studies, and the development of new instruments now undergird an effort to resolve the many questions raised in these far-flung debates.

Glen’s enthusiasm captures the intellectual and disciplinary shockwaves caused by the Alvarez team’s findings. Several antecedents imagined catastrophic explanations for dinosaur extinction, from cosmic rays or meteorites, but this paper was the first to offer more than a just-so story. The Alvarez team faced ridicule for entertaining catastrophic extinction, but their imaginative leap transformed our ideas about the multiple paths to life’s extirpation. Their ideas have been so successful that many now worry we have triggered another catastrophic mass extinction.

The Apocalyptic Anthropocene

The desert lit up with a fiery dome that bloomed into a mushroom cloud 12 kilometres high. The intensely hot fireball mutated from purple, to green, and blinding white light, visible for 160 miles. The blast carved a crater 80 metres wide and 1.4 metres deep into the desert while the sand melted into green radioactive glass encircling the epicentre for almost 300 metres. The scar marked the successful detonation of the world’s first nuclear weapon, ‘The Gadget’, at 5:29 a.m. on 16 July 1945, in New Mexico. Code-named Trinity, the test was the culmination of the American military’s Manhattan project to build an atomic bomb in the midst of the Second World War. For three years, the physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer, now immortalized in a Hollywood blockbuster, led the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico where research into nuclear fission and its application made the weapon possible. With hundreds of personnel cheering and cameras capturing the moment for posterity, their mission bore monstrously lethal fruit.35 White ‘snow’ blanketed areas of Mexico as much as 250 miles away. This toxic fallout blighted the lives of local people, many of whom developed severe illnesses such as cancer.36 Twenty-one days later, on 6 August, the US military detonated an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima, and three days later an atomic bomb targeted Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on 10 August and the Second World War drew to a close on 2 September. The atomic bomb hastened the end of the Second World War while ushering in the spectre of a self-inflicted mass extinction.

Scientists developed ideas of mass extinction as Cold War tensions ramped up and fears of nuclear war pervaded daily life, with school safety drills and televised digests of political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The two shifts are intimately connected. It would be easy to write about mass extinctions as becoming scientifically palatable once the fossil record was better understood, or mathematical modelling made broader patterns of evolution significantly easier to see, particularly by younger men eager to make their own names in conflict with existing authorities. It would certainly be an attractive story of discovery against the odds, but it would underplay the broader social and cultural factors that shaped theories of extinction, as well as scientific research more broadly.

Jack Sepkoski’s son, David, is a historian of science specializing in palaeontology and scientific ideas about extinction. He suggests that broader fears of nuclear war plausibly resonated with scenarios of mass extinction. Recollecting repeated nightmares about atomic bombs, he writes:

It didn’t occur to me at the time to wonder whether there was any connection between the way scientists like my father understood mass extinction, and the pervasive anxiety we all felt about nuclear war … I came to be convinced that it was no accident that catastrophic mass extinction became an object of scientific study and popular fascination at precisely the moment when we imagined a similar fate for ourselves.37

As knowledge of the horrific consequences of dropping nuclear bombs accumulated, this exacerbated fears of the Americans or Soviets using nuclear arsenals to settle broader ideological and political conflicts. Advocates for battling communism claimed that using nuclear weapons would only cause targeted devastation, making a nuclear war winnable. Opponents warned that no one might survive, let alone win.

The public learned of their impending extinction in 1983. Carl Sagan, a distinguished astrophysicist, Pulitzer-prize-winning popular science writer and presenter of Cosmos, America’s most popular television science series at the time, wondered whether the Alvarez hypothesis might illuminate the atmospheric climate change following a nuclear war. Sagan and a team including several of his former students modelled the effects of nuclear war on earth’s atmosphere. In October 1983 an impatient Sagan wrote about their ideas for the popular press, with the team’s co-authored scientific paper following in December’s issue of Science. They estimated that the world’s nuclear arsenal amounted to about 12,000 megatons concentrated in 17,000 warheads with the firepower of ‘1 million Hiroshima bombs’. They modelled the effects of detonating anything between 5,000 and 25,000 megatons and predicted that unleashing even the lower ranges of that firepower would trigger immense conflagrations, releasing blackened palls of noxious gas and incinerating materials amounting to about 225 million tonnes. The sun would warm the soot and smoke still further and carry them into the upper stratosphere. Rain might wash away the soot in a couple of months, but finer dust storms would swirl around the globe hindering sunlight for years. A cold, endless night would visit crop failures and famine across the world. The radically reduced ozone layer would expose humans to unbearable levels of ultraviolet radiation.38 Humans were on the verge of inflicting their own extinction through playing Star Wars chicken.

While Cold War threats have faded in recent years, our fears continue in new guises. As scientists ushered in the spectre of nuclear war, they may have also inaugurated a new geological epoch. Trinity’s fallout, and the flurry of atomic-bomb testing in this period, littered earth’s atmosphere with radioactive debris. Soil samples and ice cores worldwide captured a ‘bomb spike’ of radioactive Carbon-14 and Plutonium-239 beginning in 1945 and up to 1951, with radioactive molecules peaking in 1964.39 They are likely permanent scars. Even if you’ve never seen a geological chart subdividing earth’s existence into units of time, you’re likely familiar with at least a couple of periods, such as the Jurassic or Triassic. Geologists currently believe our planet warmed over the last 11,700 years after the last Ice Age during the Holocene epoch. In the intervening millennia, human societies have flourished, but also wreaked havoc on the planet.

The Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen suggested recognizing humanity’s intervention in earth systems with a new geological epoch named the Anthropocene. The term derives from the root ‘anthropo’ meaning human and ‘cene’ signalling a geological epoch. Since 2009, the Anthropocene Working Group has analysed the case for formally recognizing a new geological division. Their preliminary reports suggested that the new epoch had begun – raising the issue of when. Many beginnings vied for the grim accolade. The earliest starting point suggested is the extinction of Pleistocene fauna such as mammoths through human predation about 14,000 years ago, while the beginnings of human agricultural cultivation around 5,000 years ago has also been proposed. Others argue that the starting point should be recognized as the early colonization of the Americas and subsequent destruction of ecosystems, extinctions, and profound violence visited upon Native nations known as the ‘Colombian exchange’.

Extinction looms large in debates about the origins, nature, and future dangers of the Anthropocene. Originally, Crutzen and other members of the Working Group favoured fossil-fuel-powered industrialization in the 1800s and the increasingly rapid release of greenhouse gases as their preferred starting point. Advocates of recognizing an early date single out human hunting and the loss of beloved megafauna such as the mammoth. Supporters for recognizing the 1500s as the start of the Anthropocene epoch hope to account for catastrophic environmental destruction and genocide resulting from the colonization of the Americas.40 This also overlaps with the historical period of ecosystems collapse covered by the IUCN’s globally used Red Lists of extinct and endangered species. Extinction may not always have scarred the geological record enough to leave global signals sufficient to determine the start of the Anthropocene, but it is a recurrent theme in debates about the wounds we have inflicted on earth and such destruction has quickened the pace of exterminating countless ways of being. In 2023 the Anthropocene Working Group recommended that geologists recognize the mid-twentieth century as the start of the Anthropocene. Against all expectations, geologists rejected the proposal in the first formal vote following years of debate in 2024. The surprise decision drew immediate, and ongoing, controversy with accusations that the vote was invalid.41

Scientists, environmental activists, and writers started categorizing species loss as a biodiversity crisis requiring new conservation strategies in the late 1970s. Conservation biology emerged as a distinctive discipline in this period, as conservationists moved on from trying to specify desirable sizes for wildlife refuges to considering minimum viable populations of species. The first international congresses in conservation biology were held in 1978 and 1985, spanning the same years in which new ideas about mass extinction reached the wider scientific community. Stark warnings about rapidly increasing rates of species extinction circulated in mass-market books such as Norman Myers’ The Sinking Ark (1979). The environmental campaigner warned that ‘within the twinkling of an evolutionary eye’ humans risked creating ‘a biological débâcle greater than all mass extinctions of the geological past put together’. He assured readers:

… by tomorrow morning we shall almost certainly have one less species on planet Earth than we had this morning. It will not be a charismatic creature like the Tiger. It could well be an obscure insect in the depths of some remote rainforest. It may even be a creature that nobody has ever heard of. But it will have gone. A unique form of life would have been driven from the face of the earth forever.42

Many warnings focused on charismatic species and the potential harm of losing undiscovered medicines and natural resources. Myers did not shy away from these arguments, but this passage outlines his hope that readers would empathize with the loss of ways of being. Within two years, further warnings about the ecological consequences of accelerating extinctions circulated in Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species (1981), written by the biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich.

Books, films, and television documentaries consistently warned of ubiquitous endangerment in the late twentieth century, creating new languages of loss. In the mid-1980s biologists adopted the term biodiversity as shorthand for biological diversity, and by the late 1980s loss was reconceived from the problem of vanishing individual species to a crisis of waning biodiversity.43 The sense of environmental urgency gathered pace when that crisis was reframed as the beginning of a sixth mass extinction. The anthropologists Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin first popularized the term in their book The Sixth Extinction: Biodiversity and Its Survival (1995). More recently, the journalist Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) has reached a new generation of readers. The evocative phrasing would not make sense without the theoretical shifts of the 1980s.

Our sense of crisis is well justified, but it is just as important to choose wisely amid the panic as it is to avoid being petrified into inaction or sleepwalking into a crisis we might have prevented. We are clearly losing many ways of being, although there is disagreement over just how much faster extinctions are now taking place.44 Suggestions for halting the sixth mass extinction include devoting immense portions of earth to wildlife refuges to allow our planet to recover. The United Nations adopted the new Global Biodiversity Framework at the UN Biodiversity Conference, or COP 15, in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022. Often called ‘30 by 30’, the framework commits to protecting and renewing 30 per cent of the planet by 2030. The ‘30 by 30’ plan is an important effort to address the destruction of irreplaceable ancient ecosystems and related species decline, Yet, without understanding the historic roots of such conservation measures, we risk exacerbating historical injustices.

The ‘30 by 30’ policy is predicated upon the same questionable divisions between humanity and nature that have underpinned harmful conservation practices in the modern world. As we have seen, early European colonizers often imagined Indigenous peoples as noble savages at one with nature, or even as elements of local flora and fauna. By the end of the nineteenth century, sublime wilderness was redefined as devoid of all human habitation. Following the designation of Yellowstone as the world’s first national park in 1872, the model was adopted across America, Africa, Europe, and the rest of the world. National parks were originally created as wonderlands for tourists and only tied to environmental protection in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They promoted a version of wilderness predicated on the forced relocation and territorial dispossession of many nations. Conservationists treated wildlife reservations as fortresses to be protected from all humans, even Indigenous peoples with a history of using the land sustainably for centuries, or millennia.45

While ambitious, the ‘30 by 30’ policy might be an interim measure as future policies may attempt to call for a much bigger expansion of protected areas.46 The ‘30 by 30’ policy was partly inspired by the biologist E. O. Wilson’s proposal that half of earth be protected for the benefit of wildlife.47 About 250 million people are believed to live in protected areas; however, one team of scientists estimates that over a billion people might be directly affected if Wilson’s dream was implemented and, crucially, that already marginalized communities would face a disproportionate impact.48 This may seem exaggerated, but the proposed areas will probably be expansions of existing protected areas. Forced removal is worrying enough, but it also potentially targets communities with unrivalled expertise of local biodiversity. Removal on the assumption that outsiders know best is a worrying form of cultural arrogance with deep roots in colonialism.

Writing specifically about Canada, but with broader implications, the philosopher Zoe Todd maintains that ‘First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities and nations across the country deserve conservation approaches and policies’ that protect their sovereignty without pressuring them to acquiesce in externally imposed conservation strategies.49 Unfortunately, given the harmful roots of wilderness protection, the expansion of protected areas might easily perpetuate dispossession of Indigenous peoples worldwide. The ‘30 by 30’ plan might also perpetuate conservation practices that have already caused harm. When the plan was published, an open letter was circulated raising the prospect of significant human-rights abuses and signed by forty-nine signatories. The open letter stated that ‘Egregious human rights violations including wholesale involuntary removal of entire communities have been abundantly documented for decades by academics, investigative journalism and civil society organizations.’ Moreover, treating protected areas as fortresses excludes the very people who might help protect biodiversity.50

These criticisms are exceptionally important for acknowledging the widespread dispossession that might result from expanding fortress-style wildlife reservations based on past experiences. In 2019 a media investigation alleged that ecoguards working for the World Wildlife Fund had used physical violence, torture, sexual assault, and even murder in protected areas within India, Nepal, Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The WWF commissioned an independent report led by Judge Navi Pillay, a former commissioner for human rights at the United Nations. The report clarified that the WWF’s own staff had not committed any of the alleged crimes, but they did find evidence for abuses committed by park rangers appointed by governments. It concluded that the WWF had failed to act on previous allegations, and had taken insufficient steps to prevent crimes and abuses by associates, even though its ‘own human rights commitments’ were often ‘higher than those applied nationally’. The organization issued a statement outlining changes to their working practices to address the situation. While the WWF’s employees were not found guilty, the report highlights how easily fortress-style conservation practices can cause broader injustices even in the pursuit of laudable aims.

The worry that we are living through the sixth mass extinction of life on earth is commonplace in discussions about saving life on earth. The theories that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an extraterrestrial body hitting earth, and that earth has suffered five mass extinctions, are exceptionally recent theories of geological and palaeontological research in the 1980s. Until the Second World War, caution dominated our understanding of earth’s history and the role of extinction within life’s evolution. Notions of mass extinction had far-reaching consequences both for the emergence of new scientific disciplines, such as palaeobiology, and for approaches to conservation. In particular, mass extinction made scenarios of apocalyptic annihilation, whether of ourselves or of other beings, plausible and ubiquitous.

Extinction may be natural, but it is also how we make sense of the changes humanity has caused to life on earth. That makes extinction both a human idea and a political choice. The five mass extinctions of life on earth were unavoidable, but the current crisis in which we stand to lose countless ways of being is an unnatural extinction of our making. Debates over protecting our own future alongside the species with whom we share this planet will continue. Instead of addressing our panic and widespread loss with policies that perpetuate historical dispossession, we stand to gain far more by imagining new forms of conservation and asking more from those who bear far greater culpability and responsibility for our current predicament than the Indigenous nations wrestling with the details of the ‘30 by 30’ plan. In our current panic, having the courage to imagine differently will help ensure that every way of being that has escaped past catastrophes might still survive and thrive.

8.

Pinosaur Redux

Trees can outlive other beings by an astonishing magnitude. The bristlecone pine Methuselah lives in the White Mountains of California, a land known only to Native nations for more than the first four millennia of the tree’s 4,850-year existence. Yet Methuselah is not even the oldest known tree in the world. Another unnamed bristlecone pine in the same mountain range is believed to be at least 5,070 years old, but even this does not match the age of Prometheus, a bristlecone pine that stood in Nevada, but was dated to 5,200 years old after it was felled in 1963. This trio of pines existed even before humans developed writing around 4,600 years ago.

While these pines are the oldest living individual trees, older communities thrive. Some trees live a couple of centuries as individuals, but regenerate through cloning themselves and last for millennia. A creosote bush in California has survived 11,700 years, while Pando is the world’s largest plant, and one of the world’s oldest living organisms at about 14,000 years old. Pando is a grove of 48,000 quaking aspen trees sharing a single root system across 106 acres near Fish Lake, Utah, creating an extraordinarily beautiful sea of autumnal yellow leaves. Pando’s exact age remains disputed, but this ancient being probably existed before the Quaternary extinction event 10,000 years ago, which killed some of the most famous prehistoric megafauna such as most mammoths, megatheriums, and sabre-toothed cats.1 Even common species can live for millennia. The Bowthorpe Oak in Lincolnshire is believed to be Britain’s oldest oak, having lived for more than a millennium. Britain’s, and possibly even Europe’s, oldest tree is most likely the Fortingall Yew. It thrives in a Perthshire churchyard in Scotland, and cautious estimates age it to between 2,000 and 3,000 years old, but the yew might be as old as 9,000 years.2 Yews are among the longest-living species in Europe. Often planted in churchyards, they are associated with death. The lifespans of these pines, oaks, and yews far outstrip the survival capacity of most living beings.

Respecting such ancient lifeways honours life itself, yet plants rarely feature in histories of extinction. Whether in post-war conservation efforts or in historical accounts of broader environmental movements, plants are commonly neglected in conservation projects and historical narratives. Such disregard is a shame, as incorporating plants into histories of extinction challenges us to think beyond anthropocentric and animal-centric policy-making and history writing. Just before the new millennium, one man’s chance encounter with an unknown and ancient tree sparked worldwide interest in botanical conservation. As botanists realized that the tree’s origins stretched back into a world still inhabited by dinosaurs, they hoped for new insights into earth’s past climate and biodiversity. Promoted as the botanical find of the last century, the tree’s journey from wild endangerment to global celebrity is a rare tale of an endangered plant attracting global conservation efforts.

Like ‘Finding a Small Dinosaur Still Alive’

The jagged mountain vertebrae of Australia’s Great Dividing Range entwine into a spine along the continent’s southeast and eastern coastline. A million hectares of this astonishing landscape form the Greater Blue Mountains Area, including seven national parks and a conservation reservation on the unceded lands of the Gandangara people. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site at the turn of the millennium, it attracts millions of visitors every year keen to see a sliver of wilderness, especially the Three Sisters. These mountain peaks tower more than 900 metres over a valley dominated by eucalypt forest and suffused with blue haze.3 Wending away from tourist hotspots leads to unfamiliar territory riven with deep fissures that expose the underlying sandstone. No one knows the precise number of canyons amid these uplands, but estimates range as high as five hundred for Wollemi National Park alone. Reputedly named after the Darkinjung word wollumnii meaning ‘look out’ or ‘watch your step’, the name acknowledges, albeit inadequately, the land’s first guardians.

The ancient landscape attracts millions of visitors every year. In September 1994 three experienced local hikers found a canyon previously unknown to them in Wollemi National Park. One of them was a field officer for the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) named David Noble. He noticed a small grove of peculiar trees that were unfamiliar to him, despite his considerable knowledge of the area. From mounds of leaf debris rose tall slender trunks with strangely bubbled bark and bottlebrush-shaped crowns chasing sunlight high into the canopy. Intrigued, Noble took some leaf cuttings and headed home with his friends. A few days later, Noble showed the cuttings to his equally puzzled father. They sought a second opinion from the botanist Wyn Jones who also worked for the NPWS. He could not name the tree despite his comprehensive acquaintance with the local flora. The fernlike leaves led Jones to assume they were from a bush, and he was utterly shocked when Noble confirmed the cuttings were in fact from tall trees. Jones consulted a botanist based at the Royal Botanical Gardens of Sydney, who was similarly stumped. The trees remained a mystery.

Jones nurtured a suspicion that the trees belonged to the ancient conifer family Araucariaceae, but he needed further specimens to confirm the hunch. Nearly five weeks after Noble’s chance find, he and Jones visited the canyon to take photographs and collect samples. Jones also started collaborating with the botanist Jan Allen to identify the species. They quickly realized that leaf samples were insufficient as members of the family are distinguished by their female seed cones. Within a week of the second trip, Jones and Noble visited the trees again. Reaching the seed cones required dangling precariously above the canopy from an overhead aircraft. Jones and Allen confirmed that the tree belonged within an ancient family of pines by dissecting the seed cone, but they hit a dead end when trying to be any more specific about the genus or species. They wondered if they were on the cusp of a major botanical find.4

The Araucariaceae family of conifers are thought to have originated in the Triassic Period between 230 and 190 million years ago, with wild-forest communities scattered across the southern hemisphere in Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and South America. In the mid-1990s botanists identified two living genera within the family: Araucaria and Agathis. The spiky monkey puzzle tree was the first described member of the Araucaria, with its name honouring the tree’s native Arauco province in Chile. Araucaria also includes the bunya-pine, whose cones can easily weigh 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms); the Cook pine, named after Captain James Cook; the hoop pine, widely cultivated for its timber; and the strikingly symmetrical Norfolk Island pine. Agathis includes species such as the black kauri, Sulawesi kauri, Sabah kauri, and Sarawak kauri, also grown for their timber. Although characteristically southern inhabitants now, fossil remains confirm the family thrived globally from around 200 million years ago until the same mass extinction leading to the death of the dinosaurs wiped out northern communities, except in pockets of Southeast Asia, 66 million years ago. The genus includes nineteen species. Five species are endangered, and three considered vulnerable to extinction.5

Seed-bearing conifers existed long before flowers and appear in the fossil record about 300 million years ago. Conifer seed cones are distinctive enough to define species in formal classification. Although commonly called pines, none of the family feature seed cones with the paired winged seeds characteristic of true pines. Araucaria seeds are all fused to the female cone, and they fall as fragments of scale and seed as the cone disintegrates. Agathis is defined by winged seeds that fall freely from, rather than with, seed cones. When Jones and Allen dissected the female cones of the mystery tree, they found seeds fell freely from the cone as with Agathis, but they lacked its wing. The tree’s visible peculiarities and seeds were distinctive enough to classify it as a new genus with only one known, or monotypic, species. Jones and Allen informally nicknamed the tree the Wollemi pine and co-wrote a scientific article with Hill, formally naming it Wollemia nobilis honouring its wild sanctuary and Noble’s role.6 The scientific paper also detailed its etymology, structure, seeds, and ecology, categorized it as endangered, and called for its conservation.7 Their fears were well founded.

Wollemi pines are curious ways of being. They might reach a height of 40 metres (131 feet) in the wild. Their resinous dark-brown bark resembles bubbling chocolate, giving rise to the ‘Coco Pops tree’ nickname. The tree has a unique double crown, with mature foliage at the top and juvenile foliage below. Wollemi pine leaves begin as bright-green foliage closer to a fresh lime, or apple, maturing into a slate blue-green. The branches whorl around their trunks and bear flat leaves in even rows. The soft juvenile leaves arranged in two rows look remarkably like ferns. Darker, stiffer mature leaves are arranged in four rows in the upper crown and are tipped with either male or female cones. Male and female cones are found on the same trees, making them bisexual, or monoecious. Many trees salvage nutrients after reproducing and redirect the energy and resources to grow fruits and seeds. We experience this rhythmic senescence as spectacular autumnal shades before leaf fall reveals woody skeletons that sleep until spring. Wollemi pines shed entire branches, forming a coppery bed of debris around emerging trunks. The trees regenerate through ‘coppicing’, when new trunks grow from old bases or burnt stumps, allowing the trees to survive periodic wildfires or injury. Wild individuals might have dozens of younger trunks surrounding a lost original stem, making them difficult to date. Given that individual stems may easily survive for centuries, a whole tree might live for many centuries or even beyond a millennium. David Noble first stumbled into a grove of about forty trees at different stages of growth, but three further sites were subsequently found. By 2021, forty-six adult trees were producing seed-bearing cones, while eleven older juveniles, and thirty-two younger saplings survived across four sites.8

Wollemi pines were called ‘living fossils’ almost immediately. Locating their genuine fossils took years, but it solved two botanical mysteries stretching back to the 1960s. Pollen grains are abundant in the fossil record because they have tough outer casings that make them significantly hardier than any other remains of parent plants. When the palaeobotanist Wayne Harris encountered an unfamiliar and profuse pollen type in 1965, he named it Dilwynites. Traces were scattered from Tasmania to Perth, Antarctica to New Zealand, dating between 91 million to 2 million years ago. Hearing of the Wollemi pine, the palaeobotanist Mike Macphail revisited specimens of Dilwynites and realized they closely matched the Wollemi pine’s historic range. He first confirmed the link in 1995 and later found pollen traces in South America.9 While Harris pored over microscopic pollen remains, the palaeobotanists Carrick Chambers and his doctoral student Andrew Drinnan explored fossilized plant remains from the Australian state of Victoria. They were particularly puzzled by a conifer apparently within the Araucariaceae family, but not fitting into the two known genera Araucaria and Agathis. Without naming the curious tree, they described it as an intermediary. When news of the Wollemi pine broke, they revisited the unnamed fossils and realized they were of the same tree.10

Lifeways known only from the fossil record, but then found living, are called ‘Lazarus Taxa’ or ‘Lazarus species’ after the Biblical tale of the dead brother mourned by his sisters Martha and Mary, but miraculously returned to the living by Jesus.11 The miracle of the dead rising again, with grief capitulating to joy, captures the shock and exhilaration of encountering a way of being thought lost.

Living Fossils

The ‘dinosaur pine’ made international headlines from Melbourne to New York, and Mumbai to Japan. New species are named every year without public fanfare. Larger fauna might attract attention, but flora rarely make headlines. The Wollemi pine was a rare exception. The National Parks and Wildlife Service press release proclaimed a ‘Jurassic Pine Discovered in Blue Mountains’. Press reports, popular science articles, and sober bulletins of learned societies all characterized the ‘Jurassic Pine’ as a ‘living fossil’, ‘back from the dead’, with roots in the ‘dinosaur age’.12 The Director of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens maintained the ‘discovery is the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur still alive on earth’, while the gardens’ scientific director ranked the find as ‘one of the most outstanding discoveries of the century’. Ferns and mosses are evolutionarily older, and Ginkgo trees are the only known living connection between ferns and conifers, but finding an unknown plant of such size and ancient origins is extraordinary. Botanists were clearly overawed and compared finding the Wollemi pine to an earlier discovery in China.

As the school principal Lung-Hsing Yang admired the shuishan tree towering over a place of worship, he eagerly sought its scientific name. The deciduous bright-green leaves congregated in small branchlets, seed-bearing cones, and fissured dark-grey bark, flaking away in ribbons and revealing inner brown hues that were unlike any other tree in the area. When he met Chan Wang, an employee of the Bureau of Forest Research conducting fieldwork in the forests of Enshi, western China, in 1943, Yang hoped he might finally have an answer, but he was disappointed. Intrigued by news of this strange tree, Wang visited Moudao, in Sichuan province, where he found the tree and collected specimens he later identified as a cypress. Three years later he gave a specimen to a colleague, who showed the herbarium sheet to his botanical colleague Wan-Chun Cheng at the National Central University. Convinced the species was not a common conifer, Cheng examined the original specimens collected by Wang, arranged for a student to collect further specimens, and shared his suspicions with his colleague Hsen-Hsu Hu, Director of Beijing’s Fan Memorial Institute of Biology. Hu reclassified the tree within the Metasequoia genus first described by Shigeru Miki at Kyoto University in 1941. Miki had worked from fossils widely believed to represent an extinct species more than 100 million years old. Hu first described the species as a living fossil in print in 1946 without formally naming the species. Two years later, Hu and Cheng formally named Metasequoia glyptostroboides, making headlines around the world.13

Finding a living Metasequoia has also been proclaimed ‘As remarkable as discovering a living dinosaur’.14 Locally known as shuishan, initial press reports either used the Latin name, or called it Chinese water fir, but the tree was quickly nicknamed the Dawn Redwood by the botanist Ralph W. Chaney, who wrote about the species for American audiences. The Times reported the overwhelming scientific and public interest revealed in the ‘romantic unexpectedness with which natural history, after centuries of investigation, still enchants its devotees’.15 While Hu prepared his publications, Cheng’s colleague Ching-Tsan Hwa returned to the only known tree to gather more specimens. Exploring further, he found a valley with a large community of mature trees. He gathered seeds that were later shared with the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, from where they were distributed to researchers and botanic gardens across the world. These seeds grew into the oldest individuals of the species now living outside China, many now towering over the crowns of native trees worldwide. In 1948 the founding of the Chinese Shuishan Preservation Committee led to the population count of known trees rising from a few dozen to at least 1,219 adults after an expedition led by Chinese and Californian botanists.16 By the 1970s, 5,746 wild trees were known. A further 5 million trees were planted to create the City of Metasequoia, including the longest tree avenue in the world, in 1996.17 The shuishan was listed in the Register of Major National Protected Wild Plants in 1999, while propagation and celebration of the tree ensured it grew into a native ‘national treasure’, rooting modern Chinese identity in the tree’s past.18

When the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Wollemi pine was a living tree from the ‘Dinosaur Age’, it provided readers with a brief chronology of other finds including the lungfish in 1870, the coelacanth fish in 1938, and the ‘Dawn Redwood’ tree in 1941. The appeal of these romantic narratives of discovery is understandable, but they also leave a great deal out. Most obviously, they erase the knowledge of local people and their historical interaction with a species. The shuishan already shared a home with people, and botanists were only alerted to its existence by the curiosity of an ordinary school principal about an alternative name. Yet, retellings frequently begin with Wang’s first encounter with the tree.19 Historians of science have long cautioned against narratives of discovery and lone scientific geniuses precisely because they obscure much richer stories of exchange and collaboration across global networks, and professional practices dependent on people often not recognized as makers of scientific knowledge in their own right, whether lab technicians, skilled artisans, or local field guides.20

When botanists described the Wollemi pine as a living fossil from the age of the dinosaurs, they hoped that the tree would provide new clues to earth’s past. Wollemi pines first thrived in landscapes so ancient that they exceeded many previous estimates for earth’s antiquity. By the end of the nineteenth century, geologists contemplated an earth aged 100 million years old, whereas physicists favoured estimates ranging from 40 to 50 million years old. After William Röntgen identified X-rays in 1895 and Marie and Pierre Curie’s research on ‘radio-activity’ in the same decade, estimates for earth’s age expanded by an astonishing order of magnitude. Before the First World War, the first cohorts of physicists and chemists used radioactive decay as a molecular clock and increased estimates for earth’s age to at least 1,600 million years. After the Second World War, increasingly precise molecular clocks underpinned a new consensus around the absolute figure of 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth.21 Meanwhile, geologists also puzzled over apparently broken threads of rock traversing oceans. Why did the stratigraphy of the Appalachians mirror the Scottish Highlands? Why did the coasts of South America and Africa look like a sheet of rock torn in half? The geologist Alfred Wegener’s book On the Origin of Continents and Oceans (1915) suggested that present-day continents were not immobile entities formerly connected by land bridges as often imagined, but continually displaced fragments of earth’s crust. Wegener’s theory of ‘continental drift’ proved controversial for decades. In his book Principles of Physical Geology (1944), the geologist Arthur Holmes argued that continents were not freely floating flotsam, but had been tugged apart by vast underlying movements. By the 1960s, geophysicists divided earth’s crust into ‘tectonic plates’, slowly parted by sea-floor spreading, to explain the fracturing of earth’s land mass.

Geologists now believe that 250 million years ago the supercontinent Pangea included earth’s entire land mass. About 180 million years ago Pangea fractured into the twinned supercontinents of Laurasia in the northern hemisphere and Gondwanaland in the southern. They also splintered into fragments that Europeans named North America, Europe and Asia from Laurasia; and Antarctica, India, Australia, South America, and Africa from Gondwanaland. The labour of the Atlantic Ocean’s birth cleaved apart Africa and South America, and the emerging sea floor divided Madagascar and Africa during the Jurassic Period. Pangea’s parts are thought to have drifted until their shapes and relationships were almost recognizable from a modern map by 65 million years ago, although North and South America were independent while Australia and Antarctica were united. About 34 million years ago Australia split from Gondwanaland to form the world’s largest island, and remained so even after Tasmania drifted into isolation from Australia and Antarctica by around 30 million years ago. Moving across the continent from Western Australia to New South Wales means crossing from the oldest rocks (Archean, 4,500–2,000 million years ago) to newer formations (Palaeozoic, 542–251 million years ago). As the continent heated and dried, much of Australia’s lush green and temperate climate transformed into sparse bush and outback.22

Gondwanaland’s rainforests retreated to the eastern boundaries of the continent and endured as tiny prehistoric microcosms where Wollemi pines survived. The scientific paper naming the tree withheld their location because the authors feared avaricious collectors would pilfer specimens while even honest admirers might trample seedlings or accidentally introduce deadly pathogens. Fortuitously, the trees’ home in a national park made it considerably easier to incorporate them into existing conservation practices and provide extra security. Within a year, the New South Wales government trademarked the Wollemi pine to prevent anyone collecting, cloning, or selling specimens.23 Declaring the trees ‘critically endangered’ on the IUCN’s Red List, and their home a ‘critical habitat’, offered national and international legal protection. The Wollemi pine was also the first threatened species to be provided with a formal recovery plan by the state government. It outlined measures to protect the wild trees and precautionary conservation strategies to create translocated and domesticated populations.24 With these protections, the Wollemi pine was quickly assimilated into well-established national and international mechanisms for the surveillance and protection of endangered beings, while also inaugurating new practices. Of these, the rush to clone and grow the trees is perhaps the most globally visible. Unlike many endangered beasts, the trees are relatively easy to clone and grow. Making the trees commercially available protected the wild population and ensured their descendants soon thrived in gardens the world over.

Jurassic Gardening

Sydney sits on the unceded lands of the Gadigal at the ragged eastern edge of the Australian continent. The harbour opens into the Tasman Sea, leading into the South Pacific Ocean. The Royal Botanic Garden occupies 30 hectares, cupping one of the inlet’s numerous coves, and sits alongside the opera house, giving visitors spectacular views over the water. The Royal Botanic Garden, founded in 1816 and walled into an enclosed space by 1818, is the oldest scientific institution in Australia, and earned its Royal appellation in 1959. A commemorative plaque marks the site of the garden’s first Wishing Tree, a Norfolk Island pine planted in 1818 and felled in 1915 over fears its decay might trigger a disastrous collapse.

Botanical gardens are important places for the public to learn about and enjoy a wide variety of plants, and centres of scientific research. In modern Europe their roots often lay in older physic gardens or aristocratic collections, while many new gardens were established in the colonies. From the tea and coffee we drink to the spices we use as seasoning, the cotton and linen clothes we wear, and the hardwood furniture we use, our everyday lives are shaped by a global trade in plants stretching back centuries which shaped modern empires. Some plant commodities, such as sugar and cotton, have well-known links to empire and enslavement, but the colonial and ecologically devastating harvesting of other commodities, such as teak or mahogany from tropical forests, is less well known. The economic value of some species made botanical research, and its associated institutions, immensely important within expanding European empires.

The global connections of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, especially with newly established collectors and gardens in colonies such as Australia and New Zealand, are examples of the broader imperial networks that were essential for the development of botanic gardens. As Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew between 1865 and 1885, the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker solicited botanical specimens from all over the world. His correspondents included the New Zealand missionary William Colenso, who sent Hooker many antipodean specimens. Hooker was indebted to Colenso for specimens, but also assumed that his own position within London’s elite scientific circles gave him the authority to name, and claim discovery rights for, plants sent to him by correspondents. To Hooker’s surprise, Colenso tried to name plants and used his knowledge of plants living in situ to critique Hooker’s classifications.25 Both men used colonial infrastructures to collect and exchange specimens while navigating uneasy power relations to pursue their research. Like so many other botanic gardens, Kew depended on empire to exist.

As Sydney’s botanic garden expanded into scientific research, it was incorporated within global networks of specimen exchange and scientific research. The garden’s impressive herbarium includes many specimens prepared by the naturalist Joseph Banks while voyaging aboard the Royal Navy’s HMS Endeavour under the captaincy of James Cook between 1768 and 1771.26 Botanic gardens were often sites for exploring the acclimatization of plants, and the use of plants in agriculture or medicine, so they were important sites for developing resource extraction. Initial efforts to farm crops such as corn might have failed in Sydney, but these attempts show the high priority given to cultivating economically important staples. Between the 1830s and 1850s the garden was run by two superintendents with experience of working at Kew, the brothers Allan and Richard Cunningham. They exchanged precious local plants for imported crops and seeds with Kew. As well as trying to grow crops in the garden, seeds and plants were given away so that settlers could till the soil. Early colonists regarded establishing agriculture as a practical necessity to provide food staples, but it also allowed them to tame wilderness and create valuable agricultural land. Europeans regarded such productivity as justification for the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples because they were regarded as unproductive, and therefore less deserving, occupants of the land. The intertwining of naval power, colonial prospecting, scientific collecting, and establishing agriculture is a common thread in the emergence and role of botanic gardens within European empires.

Botanic gardens were vital for exploring the Wollemi pine’s natural history and domestication. Wild Wollemi pines scatter their pollen in the spring winds of October and November, with seed cones reaching maturity the following summer and autumn, from January to March in a cycle of sixteen to nineteen months. Birds, such as the gorgeous crimson rosella, or ground feeders, such as rats, gorge on the seeds, and wild seedlings seldom reach maturity. They must fight through heaped debris on the forest floor, and usually remain saplings for decades before new canopy openings provide enough light for them to reach their full potential. The retreat of Gondwanaland’s forests and the challenges that saplings must overcome mean fewer than a hundred wild Wollemi pine trees are known, across three sites all within a relatively small area. A single fire or pathogen could wipe out every wild Wollemi pine. Fearful of such a calamity, botanists rushed to create ex situ conservation collections. The first Wollemi pine we know to have been planted has thrived at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden since 1998. Fears of unscrupulous collectors meant the tree was initially imprisoned in a cage. Eventually freed, it now towers above visitors.

Botanists tried to propagate the Wollemi pine before the public were even aware it existed. Expeditions by the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service collected cuttings from branches and leaves, seeds, and a seedling. Large white nets placed under the canopy harvested seeds in 1996 and 1997, while cones could only be reached by dangling from a helicopter, and were collected in February 1995 and March 1998. The seedling was watched over at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden with such caution that an official noted ‘anyone even breathing on it makes the garden’s staff nervous’.27 Fortunately, researchers realized that the natural tendency of Wollemi pines to regenerate made domestication through cloning possible.28 In the new millennium, an assortment of specimens raised at Mount Annan in New South Wales were moved to Queensland under the auspices of the state’s Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries in the hope they could be sold within six years. The founding collection included 300 plants raised from cuttings from wild plants, 500 seedlings raised from seed collected from the wild, and 200 plants raised from cuttings taken from trees grown in the gardens. These 1,000 plants were descended from twenty-six individuals from the first site and eighteen from the second site, and they are the parents of almost every domesticated Wollemi pine.29 Eleven years after the survival of ‘Pinosaur’ made headlines, nearly 300 mature-looking trees were the first Wollemi pines ever sold.

The days leading up to the auction in October 2005 were marked by thunderstorms, but the sun finally broke over Sydney’s Royal Botanical Garden for Sotheby’s ‘sale of the century’. Better known for selling the world’s finest art and antiquities, the auction house strayed into botanical territory when it provided collectors with a chance to bid for the Jurassic pine. More than four hundred people eagerly took their seats or stood, while the press gathered. Reports claimed the auction was the most anticipated since ‘the sale of the late Marilyn Monroe’s belongings’.30 Sotheby’s marketed the trees as the ‘First Generation Collector’s Edition’. Publicly exhibited at the gardens beforehand, the 292 trees were split into 148 lots. The lavishly illustrated catalogue included panoramic photographs of the sandstone gorges in which the wild trees survived, carefully labelled maps showing the location of each parent tree, and individual photographs of every sapling. Each sapling was named: some after the wild parent from which cuttings were taken, others from classical heroes such as Hercules or the Egyptian god Geb to the Three Explorers, honouring the first three Europeans to cross the Blue Mountains. Some saplings were auctioned as collections named after famous European naturalists and explorers, such as Joseph Banks and Charles Darwin. Most were named after men, and none was given a name from an Aboriginal language.

Spirited bidding ensured the gavel first fell at AU$6,000 for a tree propagated from the tallest wild tree nicknamed King Billy. Brisk bidding ensured the sale of every lot within three hours. Prices ranged from AU$1,680 to over AU$200,000. A family of twenty trees from the same parent sold for AU$21,000. A collection named after Joseph Banks sold for AU$135,625, and went to a private bidder who bought a total of forty-seven trees for AU$230,000. The auction raised AU$1,059,165, to fund further research and conservation efforts.31 Many bidders were representatives of botanic gardens hoping to secure a prized specimen. Less than a decade after the auction, a survey of ex-situ conifer collections found the Wollemi pine growing in nearly a hundred botanic gardens and arboretums across the world.32 Domestic gardeners faced a longer wait, but soon snapped up trees from commercial nurseries for a fraction of the cost.

Botanic gardens conserved the Wollemi pine by using seed banking, cloning, and ex situ conservation to protect against future loss. A global survey of conifer collections found nearly 80 per cent of the world’s threatened conifers were present in 800 botanical collections, but approximately 130 threatened taxa were either barely present or entirely absent from these collections.33 Botanic gardens are important sites for many ways of conserving plants, from growing threatened trees to seed banking. A few years after the Sotheby’s auction, Australia’s Black Summer dramatically affirmed the importance of ex situ safeguards.

Lightning pierced the skies above the Blue Mountains weeks into the scorching October of 2019. On the 26th, fiery light hit the ground near Gospers Mountain causing desiccated debris to ignite. The flames swelled into a ferocious blaze that devoured the forests of Wollemi National Park for weeks, while hundreds of fires scorched neighbouring regions. By mid-November, 90,000 hectares were charred. Worse followed when the Gospers Mountain fire combined with other wildfires to create a mega-fire. Nearly three months later, the flames subsided after having burned more than a million hectares in Australia’s largest recorded wildfire. Global news outlets streamed footage of charred communities and ecosystems. The fire was the fiercest among 15,000 of the Black Summer. Wildfires burned more than 19 million hectares between 2019 and 2020, including 3.5 million hectares of protected environments.34 Thirty-three people died and 3,000 homes were obliterated, while an estimated one billion animals perished during the fires and another two billion in the aftermath. Across the Pacific Ocean, wildfires raged through California. Fires are common in both regions, but the scale and ferocity of the Black Summer’s conflagrations were extraordinary, and they raised the spectre of recurrent mega-fires caused by human-induced climate change.35

As the fires threatened Gondwanaland’s survivors, firefighters risked their lives to protect the Wollemi pine from extinction. Initially, they hoped to stop the flames reaching the trees. When that proved impossible, they tried to minimize the damage. Aerial firefighters dropped fire retardant onto the wild trees and surrounding areas, while other specialists were lowered from helicopters to work on the ground. They installed a bespoke irrigation system to soak the undergrowth and stop leaf litter igniting. Despite heroic efforts, fire enveloped the gorge and hid the wild trees in palls of smoke. This lingered for days before clearing and restoring enough light for experts to assess the damage. The species survived, but the community was scarred. Two trees died, forty-two adult trees were singed, and of the others only four escaped unscathed. Forty-three juvenile trees survived, but only eleven were well established. All the juveniles were burned, while smaller saplings in the undergrowth suffered so badly they showed little sign of recovery even two years later.36 The remarkable mission prevented extinction and highlighted the precariousness of these trees. Official estimates warned that nearly half of the Gondwanaland reserves were burned.37

Two years after wild Wollemi pines were almost reduced to ashes, their home acquired new forms of protection. After the Black Summer, the New South Wales government conducted an inquiry to review protections against bushfires. It proposed identifying the state’s most important natural and cultural assets for special conservation measures. The last haven for wild Wollemi pines was the first area to be declared an ‘asset of intergenerational significance’. Another 279 sites were later offered the same protection, which also benefited species such as the koala, brush-tailed rock-wallaby, eastern bristlebird, crimson spider orchid, dwarf mountain pine, and regent honey eater.38 The remarkable dedication to conserving the wild Wollemi pine makes clear the work that governments, conservationists, and ordinary people are sometimes willing to do to protect some ways of being. Unfortunately, most trees never enjoy such celebrity despite their desperate need for conservation and care.

Life’s Elders

Light is life. Almost all earthly life depends on those living beings able to turn sunlight into edible energy. Plants, phytoplankton, and cyanobacteria use light, carbon dioxide, and water to create oxygen, sugars, and starches, through the near magical process of photosynthesis. It is a gift infinitely more precious than the alchemists’ dream of turning base metals into gold. Photosynthesis is the first step in almost every food chain on earth that helps bind us all into communities of eating and excreting. Like many other ways of being, from gargantuan whales to dung beetles, we are so dependent on plants that we could not exist without them. Yet plants received little notice in the conservation regimes that emerged in the post-war world. While endangered birds, mammals, and landscapes were focal points for conservation efforts, botanists were left frustrated by the lack of attention to and funding for protecting plants.39 Whereas rhinos, elephants, lions, cranes, woodpeckers, thylacines, and condors were among the earliest species to be listed as threatened in the late 1940s, plants found few advocates.

As we have seen, the first lists of endangered species collated by international organizations from the late 1940s were eventually superseded from the 1960s by the Red Data Books, later the Red List, compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Delegates at early meetings hoped for a listing of plants, but the first four Red Data Books were dedicated to mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles, and freshwater fish. At the IUCN’s third general meeting in 1952, attendees argued ‘the sooner’ the organization directed ‘its attention to threatened plants, the greater will be the chances of saving some of them’.40 By 1954 a botanical subcommittee created a system for classifying endangered plants modelled on the categories used for animals: Class A included ‘Vanishing species’; Class B, ‘Threatened species’; Class C, ‘Species which need local protection to preserve representatives in certain areas’; and Class D, ‘Species restored through reforestation or management’.41 Unfortunately, the subcommittee’s work stalled for lack of funds.42 Following the IUCN’s Ninth General Assembly in 1966, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew led renewed efforts to document endangered plants supported by the Royal Society in London.

The efforts at Kew were led by the botanist Ronald Melville. Originally a pharmacist, Melville retrained and gained an honours degree in botany in 1931. He worked in the museum at Kew for sixteen years. He became a specialist on elms and served on the British government’s Vegetable Drugs Committee. When stocks of vitamin C derived from citrus fruits were jeopardized during the Second World War, he suggested using rose hips: soon, a rich rose syrup was in production. In 1950 Melville transferred to Kew’s herbarium, where he specialized in Australian plants and the evolution of flowering plants (formally known as angiosperms). He retired in 1968 and started to list endangered flowering plants. Melville eventually wrote a Red Data Book dedicated to flowering plants, which was published in 1970.43 The New York Times celebrated the addition of plants to the ‘bible of wild animal conservationists’, which already listed nearly ‘800 animal species … believed to be going the way of the dodo’.44 The focus on flowering plants, however, left swathes of the plant kingdom such as algae, mosses, cycads, ferns, and trees unlisted.

The success of listing flowering plants spurred the pursuit of more comprehensive coverage of the plant kingdom. Botanists asserted that comprehensive lists would provide the ‘world’s decision-makers’ with ‘the facts’ as they developed suitable ‘action plans’.45 Following the first global conference on the environment in 1972, the United Nation’s Stockholm Declaration identified four priorities of relevance to plants: the creation and management of reserves to conserve plants and their genetics; surveys of wild plants to establish suitable plans for further research; providing lists of plants in the wild and in ex situ collections to track their existence and population health; and finally the conservation of plants as living specimens or seed banks.46 As with so many species, conservation measures were justified not because of the inherent value of plants, but because of their possible benefit to humans in the present and future. Early reports discussed species, including plants, as present and future sources of commercially traded goods, drugs, food, or natural resources such as oils and timber. As a result, early conservation efforts often depended on debates about future human security and ensuring continued resource extraction, rather than the rights or well-being of any species, from whales to trees.

The IUCN’s Species Survival Commission, which managed listing, appointed a Threatened Plants Committee (TPC) in 1974. Based at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, the TPC challenged the systematic neglect of plants in the post-war period.47 Kew was the central node in a much broader network of regional groups, specialists, and botanic gardens where data was collated and assessed for as many species as possible. The committee noted that agricultural production, resource extraction, habitat loss, human destruction, pollution, climate change, pests, and diseases all threatened plants. The first Red Data Book which expanded coverage beyond flowering plants listed 250 species and appeared in 1978. The IUCN collated and published a revised version as the IUCN Red Data Book of Threatened Plants in 1997, which finally listed plants internationally.48 That volume provided sufficient global coverage of the plant kingdom to complement, and expand, decades of work on animals.

The plight of threatened trees soon drew dedicated attention. Botanists Sara Oldfield, Charlotte Lusty, and Amy MacKinven consulted more than 300 expert foresters, field researchers, taxonomists, conservation biologists, and botanists, through a questionnaire. They held four international workshops in the Netherlands, Costa Rica, Zimbabwe, and Vietnam to discuss the results. They also used the most recent lists of threatened plants from the IUCN and numerous regional lists to provide data. The trio marshalled their results into a landmark report that provided the world’s first dedicated assessment of threatened trees in 1998. They estimated that nearly 7,300, or 9 per cent, of the world’s 21,000 species of trees were threatened from among 100,000 species of plants worldwide.49

Botanists soon called for a global assessment of all trees. Over five years, 500 scientists based at sixty institutions collaborated to produce the first State of the World’s Trees report, published in 2021.50 The report established there were at least 58,497 tree species, and it revealed that 30 per cent were in danger of extinction, with 142 species already extinct in the wild. Trees face numerous threats including: the loss of their homes as people destroy habitats; rapacious exploitation for consumer goods from timber to fragrant resins for luxury scents; and pests and diseases. The new data underpins the Global Tree Portal. This open-source database allows users to explore the distribution and conservation status of every tree species, as well as the conservation strategies reviewed for the report.51 In direct contrast to the historical neglect of the botanical status and endangerment of tree species, the project required the ‘largest initiative in the history of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species’.52 Such dedicated attention is long overdue, and might be the first step to addressing many forms of neglect and erasure that have consequences for all life on earth.

Almost all life ultimately depends on plants, but they are consistently overlooked in conservation circles. Few plants achieve the celebrity status of the World Wildlife Fund’s panda logo, or other charismatic megafauna such as tigers, elephants, or whales. This neglect creates significant problems for policy-makers. Plants are of enormous environmental, economic, and political significance, and protecting them is essential to life’s survival.53

Paying greater attention to plants also raises important challenges for writing histories of extinction. It requires historians to radically rethink common divisions of time, place, and assumptions about which lives are historically interesting or significant. Exploring the lives of plants holds enormous potential for understanding the interconnectedness of past and present life, and perhaps even respecting plants for their own sake, not just for our self-interest.54

Trees prefer to live in communities, but far too many are lonely survivors. Whether flourishing or threatened, most ways of being, especially plants, never receive the attention or protection devoted to the Wollemi pine. The ‘Pinosaur’ is among the world’s rarest trees in the wild, but many other species fare much worse. A lone Hyophorbe amaricaulis palm survives in the Curepipe Botanic Gardens in Mauritius but every effort to harvest seeds and grow more such palms has failed.55 A single male Encephalartos woodii cycad survives in Kew Gardens, but despite extensive searching, a wild female plant of the same species has never been found in its home territory of South Africa. Nicknamed the world’s loneliest plant, there is every chance Kew’s spectacular specimen will be the last of its kind.56 The critically endangered Wollemi pine faces a more positive future precisely because botanists, government officials, and gardeners all cherish the tree.

Efforts to conserve the Wollemi pine are a reminder that extinction is a political choice. Post-war and Cold War conservation efforts were usually predicated on using ‘fuller knowledge and wiser action’ to ‘leave for ourselves and our posterity a better life’.57 These endeavours protected many species, but they were rooted in the economic desire to maximize harvests of valuable commodities, such as whale oil or timber, rather than a concern with the rights of living beings. Considering the lifeways of trees allows us to move beyond privileging our own needs to a future of genuine justice for every way of being. Our choices matter more than ever for life’s astonishing elders.

9.

Martha’s Resurrection

Passenger pigeons once congregated in the largest flocks ever known. The males’ bluish head and back were interrupted by iridescent necks glittering in greens, purples, and bronze, earning them the moniker Blue Meteor. The breast and throat were splashed with a wine-red patch. Roughly sixteen and a half inches in length for males, the birds were elegant, swift, and gregarious. About an inch smaller, females had less vivid plumage, but they had the same deep-red feet and piercing red eyes. Their scientific name Ectopistes migratorius, meaning migrating wanderer, evokes the vast journeys they would make in search of food, often stripping forests bare as they gorged on the nuts of beech, oak, or horse chestnut in spring, and fruit such as cherries, strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, and raspberries in summer. Roosting in woodlands or swamps, flocks blanketed the forest floor in a layer of snow-like dung. The combined heft of perched birds often broke tree limbs, leaving behind canopy openings into which tree saplings raced upwards. The bird’s peak population probably ranged between 3 and 5 billion birds, meaning their kind constituted 25 to 40 per cent of all birdlife across the North American continent.1 Within a human lifespan, these flocks had vanished.

The ferocious speed and number of birds lost makes their demise peculiarly astonishing. Until recently, the passenger pigeon’s fate was an arresting tale of human exploitation, but attempts to resurrect the bird raise numerous questions about how we treat fellow ways of being and the very meaning of extinction.

De-extinction conjures up fantasies of reviving creatures that no one alive has encountered: dinosaurs, mammoths, and dodos. Although understandable, this creates a sense that we live in a world where species are either alive, in however precarious a situation, or gone for ever. Yet extinction proceeds by degrees of peril and loss. Local populations, genetically distinct populations (ecotypes), subspecies, or species might all be subject to numerous local extinctions. Over time, suitable habitat might be lost and territorial range shrink. When multiple varieties of a species exist, any one of those might be lost. Many regard losing a subspecies, such as the Javan tiger native to the Indonesian island until the 1970s, as local extinction, despite the fact that tigers survive as a species. If a species is locally extinct or extinct in the wild, recovery might be achieved through reintroducing living relatives or captives and protecting them until they flourish. Such ecological restoration is ‘the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed’.2 Species might also be declared functionally extinct, when the species survives but can no longer play an ecological role, or declared extinct in the wild, when the only known survivors remain in captivity,.

De-extinction cannot be a singular act of bringing a species back into existence, because extinction covers a broad spectrum of possibilities. Instead, de-extinction might describe multiple forms of recovery, from back-breeding and artificial selection to genetically engineering new hybrids.3 New and extraordinary opportunities for ecological recovery have prompted an explosion of interest in de-extinction. With rapid technological developments, genetic engineering is transforming how de-extinction might be achieved. As these new techniques redefine what counts as extinction in technical, philosophical, and emotional terms, these multiple threads create an important story of humans struggling with loss – and grief.

Lost Billions

In 1534 the French King Francis I ordered an expedition to North America hoping to discover lucrative spices and a route to Asia. Charged with leading the voyage, the French explorer Jacques Cartier made two expeditions over the next few years. On the first voyage, Cartier sailed through the strait between the lands now known as Labrador and Newfoundland, along the west coast of Newfoundland, around the Gulf of St Lawrence, passing Prince Edward Island, the Gaspé Peninsula and Anticosti Island. Cartier achieved fame for ‘discovering’ Prince Edward Island and coining the name Canada, probably from the Huron-Iroquois word ‘kanata’ denoting a settlement.4 Near Anticosti Island he spotted an apparently infinite number of ‘wood pigeons’. His sightings provide the first known written records of the passenger pigeon. In 1663 a man hunting in Québec reportedly killed 132 birds with a lone gunshot. Five decades later, a local bishop reportedly summoned God’s help in excommunicating the birds to prevent them from damaging crops. These early testimonies teem with a sense of inexhaustible multitudes.5

Centuries later, passenger pigeons inspired awe in ornithologists surveying the birds of North America. In autumn 1813, John James Audubon, an ornithologist and enslaver best remembered for his exquisite drawings of birds later published in The Birds of America (1827–38), travelled across Kentucky from his home in Henderson to Louisville, the largest city in the state. He witnessed a migrating kit so prolific that ‘The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse.’ Audubon continued his journey mesmerized by the ‘extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, when a Hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass.’ By sunset he reached Louisville, but the pigeons took three days to pass in ‘undiminished numbers’. Audubon estimated the flock numbered 1,115,136,000 strong.6 In the same decade, Scotsman Alexander Wilson witnessed a ‘living torrent’ of passenger pigeons he believed numbered at least 2,230,272,000 birds.7 As one writer notes: ‘Assuming each pigeon was about 16 inches long … if Wilson’s flock had flown beak to tail in a single file the bird would have stretched around the Earth’s equatorial circumference 22.6 times.’8 These numbers are near unimaginable yet, within fifty years, these flocks were but memories.

The conviction of colonists that passenger pigeons were inexhaustible resources encouraged shocking wastefulness. They were killed for food, feathers, and sport, as hunters shot the bird by day, tucked into pigeon pie in the evening, and slept on passenger-pigeon feather bedding at night. In 1822 one family alone killed 4,000 pigeons for their feathers near Lake Erie in New York, while Audubon observed a hunt in which so many birds were slain that their abandoned corpses littered the ground for hog feed.9 Until the mid-nineteenth century, the birds were killed indiscriminately. In spite of these pressures, Audubon believed only the loss of forest habitat would diminish the numbers of passenger pigeons. In the 1830s and 1840s new railway networks provided hunters with access to fresh mass markets and the violence escalated into wanton slaughter, tipping the passenger pigeon into decline.10

By the 1880s, the sky no longer darkened with meandering feathered rivers: flocks of even a few hundred were rare.11 Writing in 1895, Chief Simon Pokagon of the Neshnabé nation recalled spending his boyhood ‘admiring the movements of these birds … like some great river, ever varying in hue’. Lamenting their decline in the intervening six decades, he compared flights of passenger pigeons to the greatest wonders of the landscape: ‘I have stood by the grandest waterfall of America … yet never have my astonishment, wonder, and admiration been so stirred as when I have witnessed these birds drop from their course like meteors from heaven.’ He noted that, despite Native nations hunting the pigeon, ‘under our manner of securing them they continued to increase’.12 Five years later, in the year of Chief Pokagon’s death, the last known wild passenger pigeon, a female, was shot by fourteen-year-old Press Clay Southworth in Ohio. She was later stuffed and nicknamed Buttons after the black shoe buttons substituted for her fiery red eyes.13 Sightings continued, but none were reliable and usually misidentifications of turtle or mourning doves.14

The last known passenger pigeons died in captivity. Unfortunately, these birds passed away when naturalists were more likely to capture, study, and preserve the remains of threatened ways of being than to protect survivors. Soon after opening in 1875, Cincinnati Zoo assembled an assortment of passenger pigeons. By 1909, only two birds remained there, nicknamed George and Martha Washington after the First President and First Lady.15 George died on 10 July 1910 in such a terrible condition that he was not preserved. Martha was suddenly the world’s first celebrity endling. Ornithologists wended their way to her cage as if it was hallowed ground. Martha died on 1 September 1914 – just weeks after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie triggered diplomatic turmoil and, ultimately, the First World War.16

Martha was suspended in water, frozen into a block of ice, and shipped to the Smithsonian Institution for an autopsy. Robert Wilson Shufeldt, an ethnographer otherwise known for his racist screeds on Black Americans as a ‘menace to American civilization’, dissected Martha’s corpse.17 Shufeldt carefully unpeeled her skin and, before detaching it for preservation, laid out her remains for some viscerally gruesome photographs. Nobody knows the exact date of Martha’s birth, but Shufeldt guessed she was twenty-nine years old based on the testimony of a general manager at Cincinnati Zoo. Shufeldt noted her body was in good condition, but found blood in her abdominal cavity, and observed that the right lobe of her liver and intestine had almost disappeared. He pickled her innards in alcohol, and they remain in the museum’s collection to this day. One after another, he examined her internal organs, noting the liver, gizzard, spleen, ovaries, adrenal glands, pancreas, eventually reaching her heart. In a sentimental moment, he cut no further, ‘preferring to preserve it in its entirety … as the heart of the last “Blue Pigeon” … the last representative of countless millions and unnumbered generations of its kind practically exterminated through man’s agency’.18 Shufeldt’s sense of loss is palpable, but dwelling on Martha’s significance as ‘the last living representative of its race’ indicated a broader racial anxiety. While Shufeldt’s laments are often recited in accounts of Martha’s autopsy, writers seldom acknowledge his desire to maintain white supremacy despite its broader significance.

When scientists suggested tackling perceived racial degeneration through selective ‘breeding’ and prohibiting racial intermingling, such as immigration or marriage, in the later nineteenth century, discussions about white American futures were intimately tied to apprehensions about racial extinction.19 The anthropologically minded statistician Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin’s, wrote a book called Hereditary Genius (1869) that explored his family’s success as evidence that intelligence and beauty were inherited. He implored readers to improve their ‘race’ through choosing mates carefully. While common in animal and plant husbandry, the term ‘eugenics’ was coined by Galton in 1883 for the selective breeding of people. Eugenic principles underpinned new policies controlling immigration, marriage, and forced sterilization, and targeted the lives of vulnerable people regarded as undesirable, whether poor, disabled, or not white; eugenic laws and policies were most widespread and well established in the United States, but eugenic ideas were influential worldwide. Significantly, eugenics, fears of racial decline, and annihilatory antisemitism underpinned the genocidal crimes of the Holocaust.20

In the later nineteenth century, as eugenicists confidently deemed certain people worthier of survival, marriage, and bearing children than others, some naturalists regarded threatened species as ancient, racial lineages in need of swift preservation. By the time naturalists sounded the alarms for bison, declining from more than 30 million to just a few hundred, and passenger pigeons, from billions to mere dozens, by the end of the nineteenth century, their past abundance was associated with a fast-disappearing pioneering colonial vitality.21 By the time Martha took her last breath, protecting wildlife and securing America’s whiteness were often intertwined threads.

Martha has rarely been in the public eye since her death. Her skin was mounted by Nelson R. Wood, a Smithsonian taxidermist, and remained in the museum’s storage vaults for many years (Fig. 9.1). Martha has flown twice in death, once in first class chaperoned by a flight attendant. On that first flight, in 1966, she was flown to San Diego, California, for the Zoological Society’s Golden Jubilee Conservation Conference. Upon her return to the Smithsonian, she was displayed alongside a sign announcing her historical significance:

9.1 Martha’s afterlife as a museum specimen.

MARTHA

Last of her species, died at 1 p.m.,

1 September 1914, age 29, in the

Cincinnati Zoological Garden.

EXTINCT

Martha also flew to her home state, to be displayed in the Reptile House at Cincinnati Zoo in 1974. She was returned to storage in the Smithsonian when it erected a new Hall of Mammals in 1999. On the centenary of her death, she was displayed in the exhibition Once There Were Billions: Vanished Birds of North America (2014–16), where she shared the limelight with a great auk (extinct c. 1852), Carolina parakeet (extinct 1918), and Heath hen (extinct c. 1932). Confined to storage ever since, Martha is only accessible by special request for scientific research.22

Two memorials to the passenger pigeon were erected in 1947, but they say more about human grief than avian life. Boy Scouts established the first memorial in Pigeon Hills, Pennsylvania, while the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology instituted the second in Wyalusing State Park, with a plaque identifying the harm caused as a consequence of ‘the avarice and thoughtlessness of man’.23 Ruminating on the second memorial, conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote a pre-emptively mournful elegy in expectation of the day when only ancient oaks and hills would bear any trace of the passenger pigeon’s memory. Crucially, he identified the historical and human peculiarity of his anguish:

For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun … we, who have lost our pigeons, mourn the loss. Had the funeral been ours, the pigeons would hardly have mourned us.24

Leopold’s pain captures the shock of losing one of the world’s most prolific lifeways, and it expresses why species loss is not just a singular event or a barren absence.25 Extinction is the loss of a way of being endured by the dead, the dying, and the living.

A century after Martha’s lonely departure, plans are afoot to resurrect her kind. De-extinction projects are much more likely to succeed for recently lost species as the necessary DNA is probably better preserved. Stewart Brand and Danny Hills co-founded The Long Now Foundation in 1996 (or 01996 in their preferred notation). They aim to think beyond human lifetimes or even our presence on earth, and ‘foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years’.26 The Foundation’s major projects currently include building a clock designed to chime once every 10,000 years and archiving more than 1,500 of the world’s languages in the Rosetta Project. In 2013, Brand founded Revive and Restore as a non-profit organization devoted to making de-extinction a reality. Originally an offshoot of the Long Now Foundation, Revive and Restore is now independent. 27 Brand’s TED talk ‘The Dawn of De-Extinction. Are you ready?’ debuted the project as part of a larger TED event on de-extinction and has amassed more than 2.2 million views.28 Brand’s talk was a passionate manifesto for de-extinction with the goal of transforming the ‘Sorrow, anger, mourning’ of extinction. His solution: ‘Don’t mourn. Organize.’ Brand envisages reviving lost species to rethink our relationship with the natural world. He predicts a century in which children are filled with wonder and trips to Pleistocene Park so they might grow up without ‘a view of the relation of humans with nature that is not tragic, for a change’. Such hopefulness is rare in discussions of extinction; we are more likely to encounter elegies for the dead, yet it does raise the question of whether we need to learn meaningful ways to mourn, and honour lost lives, rather than refusing to grieve.29

The Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback, led by scientist Ben Novak, is a flagship project for Revive and Restore.30 Novak promotes the de-extinction of the passenger pigeon because it is an ‘engineer species’ whose behaviour plays a crucial role in creating habitats for other species. Immense flocks of passenger pigeons used to clear and nourish the ground with guano. Their sheer weight and numbers and damage to trees created gaps in forest canopies. In combination, these behaviours helped regenerate forests and benefited other species. With declining populations, other species did not fulfil the same ecological role as passenger pigeons and so forests, and their inhabitants, suffered. 31 The impact of any hybridized species is probably impossible to predict, but, as Emily Dickinson wrote, ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’, and given the current enthusiasm for rewilding, it is entirely possible that generations of people who have never seen a passenger pigeon would welcome its return.32

Significantly, Novak’s research goes beyond trying to bring back the passenger pigeon to attempting to redefine the very meaning of extinction. In recent years, exploding interest in de-extinction has created multiple, and conflicting, meanings of the term. Novak recently intervened, suggesting that practising de-extinction scientists, rather than scholars working in the humanities and social sciences, should lead the way in defining the term. His preferred definition for de-extinction is ‘the ecological replacement of an extinct species by means of purposefully adapting a living organism to serve the ecological function of the extinct species’.33 According to Novak’s definition, the first successful de-extinction is the American peregrine falcon’s return as those birds were selectively bred to replace a lost genetic lineage and ecological function. Novak discounts cloned species as true de-extinctions because they are direct copies of an existing genetic lineage, and he also discounts selective breeding to recreate lost species because the process involves recombining elements of ancestral DNA inherited by cross-breeding direct descendants. He also argues that species which survive as frozen specimens are not truly extinct because they survive as genetic lineage, even if only in chilly suspension. In contrast, he defines frozen lineages with no living individuals as ‘evolutionarily torpid’ because they no longer evolve or perform an ecological function. Whether Novak’s definition is widely adopted or not, it is a recent example of privileging genetic lineages as the best way to define a species, among numerous other possibilities.34 Despite Novak’s preferred definition, many forms of recovery are possible whether or not they are formally defined as de-extinction.

Rewilding Spectres

In the 1960s many birds of prey were on the verge of extinction worldwide. In America the peregrine falcon’s numbers declined owing to the widespread use of the chemical pesticide DDT from the 1940s onwards. Once in the food chain and consumed by the birds, the toxin caused the thinning of eggshells. Brooding birds shattered their eggs. Decades of unsuccessful breeding eradicated the original population of peregrine falcons. In the 1970s, the Peregrine Fund bred captive birds in efforts to return the birds to the wild. These birds were crosses between seven subspecies and, once released in 1974, thrived after public outcry led to the banning of DDT. In many cases of ecological restoration, such as the beaver, there is genetic continuity between the former population and the restored animals. The resurgence of the American peregrine falcon is a striking example of de-extinction through creating a new genetic lineage.35

The most famous example of ecological restoration remains the grey wolf. Once widely distributed throughout North America, grey wolves were persecuted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries leading to a deeply uncertain future; after the federal government introduced a policy of deliberate extermination in the late 1800s, their numbers crashed to fewer than a thousand wolves scattered across the continent by the 1950s.36 Food chains are characterized by energy moving through different stages, or trophic levels: plants are the first level, herbivores the second, carnivores next, and apex predators last. Within these networks, keystone species are those that exert an outsized effect on stabilizing the ecosystem, even when present in relatively small numbers, as with apex predators. Removing a keystone species can trigger a series of unexpected and often undesirable effects lower down the food chain, known as a trophic cascade. Reduced wolf populations triggered such a trophic cascade, benefiting other species including trees such as aspen and willow, scavenging birds like eagles and ravens, and even other large carnivores such as grizzly bears. In Yellowstone, populations of coyotes, elk, bison, and pronghorn antelope all increased. Wolves were reintroduced into the wild in 1995 to check abundant grazers. Although deeply controversial at the time, the reintroduction has proved successful in rebalancing the ecosystem. From just 20 wolves in 1995, the wild population reached a peak of nearly 180 wolves in the early 2000s, while hovering around 100 in more recent years.37

Rewilding, or projects to reintroduce species to their former ranges, was first proposed as a conservation strategy by Conservation biologist Michael Soulé, founder in 1985 of the Society for Conservation Biology, and the environmentalist David Foreman in the late 1980s. Their collaboration led to the founding of the Wildlands Project, renamed the Wildlands Network, in 1991. Seven years later, Soulé and another conservation biologist, Reed Noss, penned an article on ‘Rewilding and Biodiversity’ that served as a project manifesto and foundation for the present-day movement.38 Soulé and Noss advocated protecting wilderness areas with a focus on three Cs: establishing core wilderness areas, linked through corridors to establish interlinked protected habitats providing species free passage, and allowing large carnivores to flourish. Their interest in carnivores stemmed from the large territories they needed for survival. If the large habitats of these umbrella species were successfully protected, many other species would indirectly benefit as if sheltered under their protection. In recent years, rewilding has gained new meanings as it is used to describe numerous conservation strategies beyond the original focus on the three Cs.

American rewilding projects privileged carnivores while European rewilding focused on reintroducing large herbivores. Numerous rewilding projects returned locally extinct species to their former habitats. One of the most long-standing and successful is the European beaver. Once spread across Northern Europe, beavers suffered from loss of habitat, persecution for fur and, ultimately, extinction in Sweden by the 1870s. Norwegian beavers were reintroduced to Sweden in 1922.39 Other reintroduction projects are continuing, including in Scotland where beavers disappeared in the 1600s. Similarly, the last wild European bison died in 1927. Kent Wildlife Trust and the Wildwood Trust hope that the reintroduction of the European bison in England will serve as a proxy for the steppe bison which once roamed across the continent. Advertisements for a bison herder, described in the British press as ‘the job of a lifetime’, appeared in January 2021. The herd of four were released in Blean Woods in Kent, in 2022.40 Rewilding Europe, founded in 2011, is interested in numerous other species such as lynx, elk, ibex, and white-tailed eagle.41 In these examples, the reintroduced animals are usually translocated from surviving populations to areas they formerly inhabited. For some people, these projects are ecological restoration, not de-extinction, because they are usually returning a surviving species to its former range.42

The Netherlands is home to one of Europe’s most controversial rewilding projects. The Dutch government reclaimed land from Lake Ijssel in 1968. Now known as the Oostvaardersplassen (OVP), the 6,000 hectares lay undeveloped and eventually attracted greylag geese and other beings seeking respite. As the geese flourished, their grazing prevented woodland species succeeding. The area developed into a patchwork of marshes, grasslands, open water, dotted with occasional trees, and now hosts rare birdlife including white egrets, a nesting pair of white-tailed eagles, and lapwings. Formally designated a nature reserve in the 1970s, the OVP attracted the interest of ecologist Frans Vera a decade later. He argued that modern conservationists incorrectly assumed forests once dominated Europe because they were accustomed to the landscapes created by abandoned agricultural land colonized by trees in the absence of large herbivores. In contrast, he suggested that ancient European landscapes were more likely open savannah because they were grazed by deer or extinct herbivores such as aurochs, the ancestors of domesticated cows, or tarpans, the ancestors of wild horses. Vera lamented that agriculture had turned European landscapes into large fragmented and disconnected areas of wilderness.43

Drawing on Vera’s ideas, the Dutch government introduced Heck cattle, Konik horses, and red deer to the reserve. Left to run wild, the animals flourished, but severe weather killed a third of the cattle in the winter of 2005–6, triggering public fury. A year later, an official inquiry published a report with numerous recommendations that were never implemented. Four years later, another inquiry reiterated the findings of the first report and suggested limited culling. Thirteen years later, another devastating winter destroyed the population with further public outrage over the unfed and emaciated animals. The horses were subsequently removed and limited culling now takes place. For Vera, the OVP is explicitly an open-air laboratory experimenting with rewilding, and humans must allow nature to reach a balance without intervening. For many, the experiment is valuable precisely because it allows conservationists to study open-ended ecological recovery, rather than prescriptive preservation, albeit without apex predators. Critics argue that the OVP should be more proactively managed so animals are not left to die without intervention.44 These debates will continue as the site develops and is keenly watched by proponents of rewilding. For those interested in histories of extinction, one of the most intriguing aspects of the OVP is Vera’s choice of cattle.

Heck cattle were originally bred to recreate aurochs in efforts that recall the troubling origins of some conservation projects. Hunting caused wild aurochs numbers to plummet. As perhaps the earliest recorded extinction, the last known auroch died in a Polish zoo in 1627. In the early twentieth century, brothers Lutz and Heinz Heck were keen to selectively breed close living relatives of aurochs to recreate them. The brothers followed in the footsteps of their father, Berlin zookeeper Ludwig Heck. Heinz managed Munich’s Hellabrunn Zoo from 1928 and Lutz succeeded his father at Berlin Zoo four years later. The brothers conducted extensive personal research into the various ‘races’ of aurochs, and then searched for living cattle with thick horns, muscular bodies, long legs, and an aggressive disposition. Through selective breeding they hoped to recreate an animal with the same appearance and traits as the extinct Ur-bovine, in a process also called back-breeding. Each brother recreated a herd. Heinz began in 1921 and claimed to have succeeded in spring 1932. He also tried to back-breed tarpans and quaggas, taking particular pride in rearing a zebra foal without a stripey rear in 1940. Meanwhile, Lutz secured the patronage of the National Socialist Hermann Göring, who asked Lutz to breed endangered European bison in 1935 and, three years later, to lead Germany’s Nature Protection Authority. Göring hoped the collaboration would forge a new Aryan wilderness replete with ostensibly native species to fit within the broader project of Aryanization that ultimately led to the Holocaust.

The close connections between back-breeding aurochs, mythologized Aryan pasts, and genocide reveal the profoundly complicated roots of modern Heck cattle.45 This darker history shows that de-extinction is not simply a scientific puzzle. Rather, animals, particularly those believed to belong to a nation or landscape, become important ways for humans to negotiate the pangs of absence and nationalist pride. In contrast, modern rewilders are not fastidiously concerned with replicating vanished landscapes with pure-bred, native animals. Rather, they aim to create new ecosystems to help life to thrive in unexpected ways, even if that means translocating species or creating new hybrids to find proxies for lost kinds. Since 2008 the Tauros Programme has used modern genetic advances to help recover aurochs and rewild Europe.46 This intervention is an important expansion of the Heck brothers’ early attempts.

Quaggas were a subspecies of zebra endemic to South Africa until they were hunted to extinction, especially for luxury shoe leather in the 1870s. The endling died in Amsterdam Zoo on 12 August 1883. Quaggas are striped like zebras on their forequarters, but these fade out to a uniform dark background on the hindquarters. In 1984, Reinhold E. Rau, a taxidermist and quagga enthusiast based at the South African Museum in Cape Town, now the Iziko South African Museum, obtained a dried sample of muscle and connective tissue from a quagga skin in the collections of the Museum of Natural History in Mainz, West Germany. He sent the sample to a team of scientists in California led by Russell Higuchi. From just 0.7 grams of tissue, the team managed to clone one-hundredth of the DNA of fresh muscle. Their experiment was the first to clone DNA from an extinct species. The team also recovered DNA from a mammoth frozen in Siberia 40,000 years ago. They predicted that ‘If the long-term survival of DNA proves to be a general phenomenon, several fields, including palaeontology, evolutionary biology, archaeology and forensic science may benefit.’47 In 1987 conservationists established a selective breeding programme to recreate quaggas from zebras. Named Rau quaggas, they bear the distinctive faded stripe pattern of quaggas, but they lack the chestnut background of their extinct relatives.48 Rau’s DNA sample came from a salt-preserved hide, but, following the Second World War, freezing DNA created novel possibilities and potentially redefined the meaning of life, death, and extinction.

Technologies using frozen biological material, such as in vitro fertilization, are now so commonplace that it is easy to forget how recently cold storage transformed scientific research, particularly for those interested in reproduction and replication. In 1949 the scientific journal Nature published a paper by Chris Polge, Audrey Smith and Alan Parkes, reporting on their experiments mixing glycerol with frog, poultry, and human semen. Freezing biological tissues usually creates ice crystals that can irreparably damage samples, but the team avoided crystallization by adding glycerol, allowing sperm to be frozen at exceptionally low temperatures and thawed. The breeder Rockefeller Prentice, who founded the American Breeders Service eight years earlier, wondered whether frozen semen could be used for the artificial insemination of cattle. His hunch paid off when Frosty, the world’s first calf born of frozen bull semen, was born in 1953.49 Within a decade, the journalist Ann Ewing speculated in the Science News-Letter about an impending future when scientists might ‘preserve samples of species about to become extinct, store cell or tissue cultures and antibiotic-producing organisms, and stop life processes, in disease as well as in health’.50 Ewing accurately predicted the opportunities created by suspending ‘life processes’ for endangered species and beyond.

Biologists quickly created frozen archives of threatened lives. In the 1970s, Kurt Benirschke explored using frozen samples for conservation.51 After founding the Frozen Zoo in 1972, he served as Director of the San Diego Zoo between 1975 and 1985, and the Center for the Reproduction of Endangered Species (now San Diego Institute for Conservation Research) in 1979.52 Benirschke urged colleagues to create ‘genomic libraries’ with haste. For him, every animal’s arrival, surgery, birth or death at the zoo was an opportunity to harvest cells and suspend life in glass vials stored in liquid nitrogen. Benirschke believed this would protect against future unknowns and pleaded with his colleagues: ‘You must collect things for reasons we don’t understand.’53 The Frozen Zoo was the first of its kind and now holds over 10,000 samples of tissue and blood representing nearly 1,000 taxa, including an extinct species.54 Following in Benirschke’s icy footsteps, multiple international projects now archive endangered species as frozen samples of DNA. In 1996 the Frozen Ark was established as an international consortium of projects preserving endangered species by freezing their DNA and creating a database of existing specimens.55

The potential for recovering extinct species from frozen cells was dramatically confirmed when the bucardo, also known as the Pyrenean ibex, was declared extinct in 2000. Once native to the mountainous regions of Spain, the ibex was hunted extensively, which led to severely depleted populations by the mid-twentieth century. With conservation efforts failing, in 1989 the remaining bucardos were rounded up but only three females were found. By 1999 only one survived: tissue samples were collected from her ear and frozen in liquid nitrogen. Encouraged by previous cloning experiments, a team of Spanish, French, and Belgian scientists led by José Folch used the tissue samples to clone bucardo DNA. They transferred the cloned DNA to domestic goat eggs without nuclei to create embryos. Over the course of two experiments, 792 embryos were created, 74 of which were transferred to captive surrogate goats. Seven pregnancies resulted, but only one goat gave birth to a kid, born through a caesarean in 2009. Although the tiny Pyrenean ibex appeared healthy, she died within a few minutes because of a defective lung. She was genetically identical to the last living bucardo, making her a direct clone. Despite her death, the team encouraged scientists to preserve ‘tissues and cells of all endangered species or suitable animals, as they may be useful for future cloning-based conservation programs’.56

Freezing endangered species raises questions about who or what counts as alive, dead, or extinct. The IUCN declares a species extinct ‘when there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died’.57 But are frozen remains dead? The Frozen Ark and similar projects place thousands of species in a liminal state, making declaring a way of being extinct significantly more complicated. In the case of the bucardo, the kid’s brief existence raises many questions. For some, the experiment might suggest a successful de-extinction. For others, those brief moments suggest the possibility of de-extinction, but do not yet count as success.58 As long as species remain in frozen arks, the possibility of resurrecting their kind might mean we are reluctant to define them as truly lost. Yet, this process also risks reducing species to little more than genetic information, rather than appreciating them as living ways of being with their own forms of kinship and community rooted in particular places. These are not merely abstract philosophical distinctions because archiving species in frozen libraries raises significant questions about how we collect, store, and value ways of being.

In recent years the press has often carried stories of sensational technological successes that may pave the way for de-extinction by bringing back mammoths.59 These were originally believed to have disappeared about 12,000 years ago, but a few survived until as late as 4,000 years ago on Wrangel Island, off the east coast of Russia in the Arctic Ocean, and close to the Bering Strait. This astonishing find means the last known mammoths were alive when the pharaohs ruled ancient Egypt and built the Great Pyramid at Giza (2580–2560 BCE) and the Great Sphinx (2520 BCE). The prospect of bringing back mammoths has created some of the most sensationalist reporting on de-extinction. Beyond attention-grabbing headlines, the reality is clear: if their de-extinction occurs, it will involve creating new hybrid animals through genetic engineering. Ancient DNA can be extracted from museum specimens and fossils up to half a million years old, and this window will probably grow as extraction techniques are improved. Although DNA can survive for thousands of years, it rapidly deteriorates after death and so even the best-preserved specimens provide only fragments of long-lost genomes. Scientists can splice together fragments of ancient and living DNA to create hybrid animals with traits of both living and extinct species, as with woolly mammoths. The geneticist George Church leads a team at Harvard University trying to recreate the mammoth by engineering mammoth DNA into the cells of Asian elephants. If successful, the hybridization will yield an animal that will be heralded as the de-extinction of the mammoth worldwide.60

Meanwhile, the Russian scientist Sergey Zimov founded a nature reserve called Pleistocene Park in 1989, where he aims to recreate the grasslands of the last Ice Age home for de-extinct mammoths. The Siberian reserve is split relatively evenly into meadow, forest, and willow shrubland, and is home to Yakutian horses, reindeer, moose, muskoxen, wolves, bears, lynxes, foxes, hares, ground squirrels, and marmots. Zimov also plans to reintroduce Canadian bison, Siberian tigers, and ultimately, mammoths. He originally argued that grasslands would stabilize the soil and, in turn, prevent the release of sequestered carbon which might quickly follow the ground thawing. In this scenario, rewilding Pleistocene Park with large herbivores would contribute to mitigating the worst effects of human-induced climate change, although its ultimate success remains to be seen.61

Pleistocene Park exemplifies the controversial strategy of Pleistocene rewilding. In 2000 the ecologist Josh Donlan and geoscientist Paul Martin met at a conference. They were interested in the role of megafauna in conservation. In 2005 they co-authored a paper published in Nature that ignited immediate controversy. A year later, they expanded on their ideas in a paper also co-authored with Michael Soulé and published in the American Naturalist. Donlan and his colleagues proposed a plan for rewilding North America with charismatic megafauna such as mastodons, lions, and cheetahs lost over 12,000 years ago during the Ice Age, or Pleistocene. Martin argued these extinctions were caused by human ‘overkill’, as ancient human hunters crossed the Bering Strait and took unhindered advantage of the continent’s bounty. Donlan and the team proposed a three-phase ‘Pleistocene rewilding’ of America. First, they advocated reintroducing Bolson tortoises, allowing feral horses to roam wild rather than managed as pests, and importing camels. They expected these animals to browse on woody plants in an arid ecosystem. Second, they suggested reintroducing African cheetahs, Asian and African elephants, and lions as substitutes for extinct megafauna. They argued that many of these were already captive in the United States and, although not exact equivalents of ancient beasts, might serve as functional proxies within ecosystems if released. Finally, they planned to establish a series of ‘ecological history parks’, creating a local tourist industry.62

Advocates believe Pleistocene rewilding allows conservationists to shift from ‘managing extinction to actively restoring natural processes’, thereby offering an alternative to landscapes dominated by ‘pests and weeds’ such as ‘rats and dandelions’.63 These plans require important shifts in conservation practices. First, planning any kind of recovery requires conservation projects to work towards a baseline. Within America, Columbus’s invasion in 1492 is usually used as the preferred baseline. Donlan and his team rejected this timeframe in favour of prehuman time. Second, the team sought an alternative to the sense of doom and gloom in environmental activism. They contended that Pleistocene rewilding offered radical hope amid the current biodiversity crisis, most obviously through creating wondrous parks teeming with enthralling megafauna. Finally, the team insisted that humans were ethically obliged to make amends for harming ancient biodiversity.

Opponents quickly marshalled numerous criticisms. They pointed out potential problems including the immense cost of fencing, unpredictable ecological consequences of releasing megafauna, and the economic damage likely to follow from reduced tourism to African reserves.64 These reproaches are important attempts to think through the practical challenges of Pleistocene rewilding. Yet far less attention is devoted to accounting for the differential impact of human occupation.65 After all, arguing that modern humans bear an ethical responsibility for the actions of our ancestors fails to acknowledge that some peoples have caused considerably more damage to American biodiversity, particularly after the continent’s colonization by Europeans. It also fails to address the unequal distribution of natural resources, within North America or globally. The question of who bears responsibility directly impacts who will be asked to make sacrifices in the search for a more equitable future. One of the most concerning aspects of Pleistocene rewilding is that there is so little discussion of which losses are imagined as the responsibility of everyone and the most urgent. By advocating a return to prehuman time, the rights of extinct megafauna are effectively given priority over both surviving flora and fauna and the rights of dispossessed peoples.66 By deploying the undifferentiated category of ‘human’, and the timeframe of pre-humanity, Pleistocene rewilding raises profound questions of justice, for other species and dispossessed peoples. Debating the ethics of de-extinction goes beyond mammoths, to how we treat all life.

Advocates for de-extinction argue that it has many potential benefits. One of the strongest arguments is the ethical obligation we owe to species exterminated by humans. It is difficult to admit, but extinction inevitably follows from inter-species competition. When new species arise, they vie with existing species for resources such as food and territory. Competition leads some species to survive and others to die out. Although extinction is a by-product of geological and ecological processes, humans have clearly contributed to, and accelerated, many extinctions. The geoscientist Paul Martin’s theory that humans caused the mammoths’ extinction through ‘overkill’ is still controversial, with many archaeologists disagreeing over the evidence, but it seems increasingly likely that a combination of climate change, loss of habitat, and human predation contributed to the loss of ancient megafauna. More recently, we know that many species such as the dodo, Steller’s sea cow, great auk, thylacine, passenger pigeon and countless others were lost through human exploitation and persecution. For de-extinction advocates, restoring these species provides a form of inter-species justice.

Alternatively, de-extinction might help conservation efforts. Advocates are keen on engineering extinct traits into living species in order to create proxies of lost species to help preserve certain habitats or recreate others. The best example is of mammoth rewilding and the hope that frozen tundra might be renewed into grassy savannahs. Scientists also argue that the same gene-editing techniques could be used to reintroduce genetic diversity into living populations. One option might be to use museum specimens to reintroduce extinct diversity into heavily inbred populations. Such de-extinctions would enable humans to direct evolution more precisely than ever.67

Opponents of de-extinction implore caution and the focusing of our attention and resources on stopping further extinctions. They worry that species revival will either divert resources from protecting endangered species and their habitats, or prevent humans from making the choices required to reduce the environmental impact of modern, industrialized life. Genome sequencing is getting cheaper, but the cost of making even a single species de-extinct will be astronomical. As de-extinction scientists point out, this may not necessarily divert resources from conserving endangered species because their funding predominantly comes from private donors who might not otherwise fund conservation projects.68 This may be true, but we should be aware of the intimate, and sometimes deeply problematic, connections between science, capitalism, and philanthropy that can be disavowed by assuming that private funding renders the economic aspects of less concern.69 In 2019 elite institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, and MIT were forced to apologize when news broke that they partially funded many scientific projects, including mammoth de-extinction, by accepting donations from a wealthy donor even after his conviction for horrific sexual violence.70 The question of private funding is especially pressing for de-extinction projects: after all, how much sway should wealthy people have in potentially reshaping what it means for us all to be alive, dead, or extinct?

Even if mammoths return to Pleistocene Park, many other complicated ethical and political questions remain unresolved. De-extinct species will probably be highly valuable intellectual property able to attract tourists, environmentalists, philanthropists, investors, commercial hunters, and traffickers. That discomforting list reflects the fact that species on the precipice of extinction already attract the interests of multiple groups, and not always in the best interests of the species themselves. In the case of the mammoth, one firm has already cultured cells from the beast to create meatballs. Eating extinct beasts no longer requires the whole animal even to live any kind of life.71 Assuming de-extinction projects are inherently beneficial to either the species or the environment is unwarranted. As new legal frameworks to regulate de-extinction are explored, it is imperative that the broader public becomes aware of, and participates in, these changes and the potential reshaping of who or what counts as alive, or worthy of revival.

If you could bring an extinct species back to life, would you? Which species would you pick, and why? Your answers reveal a great deal about you and the broader cultural meanings of extinction. Whenever I have asked friends, students, and strangers these questions, their responses are often ambivalent. Some choose a dinosaur out of a desire to please their younger selves (or their children). Others choose a species lost owing to human actions, such as the dodo and great auk. Very rarely, someone might suggest Neanderthals. Almost no one ever chooses a plant or insect. Everyone finds the choice difficult because they are acutely aware of picking charismatic species rather than choosing what might be best for the species or environment, and they feel ill equipped to judge. Many also worry about whether de-extinction would only create unexceptional substitutes rather than anything resembling the lost way of being. Frequent questions include: What quality of life would these beings have? Would we have learned lessons, or would the species simply become extinct again? These conversations often reveal pangs of loss, anxiety, unresolved grief, and deep uncertainties.

From rewilding degraded ecosystems to bioengineering ancient beasts, de-extinction has already changed conservation practices, and our relationship to other ways of being. De-extinction raises profound questions about the meaning of extinction and the ethics of how we treat lifeways, whether living, endangered, liminal, latent, dead, or extinct. In these debates, we need to consider what we mean by justice, and for whom or what. Whether you oppose de-extinction or not, it is already a reality. In that light, it is important for everyone to be informed about these developing technologies and consider their own ethical position. Meanwhile, aurochs, quaggas, mammoths, moas, heath hens, Floreana Island giant tortoises, thylacines and passenger pigeons are all the subject of multiple de-extinction schemes.72 These projects will yield new life forms, potentially within our own lifetimes. Whether this constitutes justice or not is another much trickier and more open question.

Birds are among the most visible sentinels of the Anthropocene. Some years ago, I moved to the countryside. A city-dweller at heart, I was rather apprehensive, but my reservations evaporated once I acquainted myself with my fellow residents, including foxes, badgers, bats, swallows, owls, kestrels, and buzzards. Every spring, as the swallows return from their epic journey across the Sahara Desert and the buzzards start mewing in the sky, my spirits soar. In late summer, as the sea of long grass is harvested for animal feed, the buzzards feast on the surprised animals denuded of cover, and kestrels hover in search of their next kill. Occasionally, red kites loom overhead. Remarkably, over the last couple of years local birders have spotted a migrating osprey and white-tailed eagle within a short drive. Just a few decades ago, these skies were markedly different as raptor populations plummeted. As they return, once common birds such as sparrows, swifts, and starlings are all increasingly rare. Seeing lone starlings arrive on these shores when they prefer to live in flocks that can number millions feels like a repetition of the passenger pigeon’s decline and extinction.

Recovery is possible, but this depends on knowing that the birds we hear at dawn or see in our skies are remnants of once larger flocks. Historically, birdwatchers have borne witness to the decline of many once abundant species in our gardens, landscapes, and skies. Most of us cannot imagine the past abundance of the passenger pigeon, but we can offer recovery to other ways of being.

10.

Hope for Leviathan

London’s Natural History Museum in South Kensington is a Romanesque cathedral rejoicing in God’s Creation. First opened to the public on Easter Monday, 1881, the building’s warm terracotta tiles, striated with blue, contrast sharply with the surrounding white neo-classical buildings (Fig. 10.1). Carved extinct and living species replace traditional gargoyles on the front façade. Visitors arriving by train and on foot pass through dark-red railings topped with golden lions, cross through gardens landscaped to represent earth’s natural history, and walk up a large external staircase to the main entrance. The doors might easily be carved into a cliff face. Visitors enter a dark vestibule and proceed to a vast, luminous central hall, where a blue whale called Hope greets all entrants (Fig. 10.2).

10.1 The Natural History Museum, South Kensington: plan, above, and the street elevation, below.

Hope dives towards the crowds in an astonishingly beautiful display. Amazed onlookers queue along the staircases and jostle each other as they capture her likeness either alone or in a selfie. Visitors on the first-floor balconies observe the crowds below ebb and flow. Hope looms over many important episodes in the history of extinction. Ten side-chapels house specimens tracing the history of the universe and life on earth below Hope.1 The easterly chapels host an American mastodon, Mantellisaurus, fossilized trees, a 2.5-tonne banded-iron formation, and an Imliac meteorite tracing ancient beginnings and extinctions. The westerly chapels showcase two giraffes, an Atlantic blue marlin, a Turbinaria coral, seaweeds, and a swarm of insects representing contemporary endangerment.2

10.2 Hope, the blue whale, Natural History Museum, London.

Hope’s biography is significant, whether as an individual whale, evolutionary lineage, or way of being prized by hunters. By exploring the ancient origins of her kind, their merciless persecution in the modern world to near extinction and ongoing recovery as a species, as well as her individual journey from a mothered calf to museum artefact, we can appreciate how Hope’s life is tied to much broader stories of the development of commercial whaling and its international regulation, the emergence of the conservation movement, or the imperial origins of public museums. While each of these threads is crucial, we can also learn how to write about, and appreciate, other ways of being for who they are, rather than what they might provide for us. In doing so, we might finally connect historically and ethically important threads for understanding Hope’s life, kin, endangerment, and the possibilities for choosing redress and renewal for life on earth.

Emptying the Deep Blue

What is a whale? Philosophers and naturalists puzzled over this question for centuries. Were they fish or mammals? How did they originate? How did they move, live, and survive underwater? The Greek philosopher Aristotle formally named baleen and toothed whales ‘sea monsters’, or Cetacea. Despite sympathizing with those who felt the fishiness of whales meant they were fish, he grouped them independently because they had hair, drew breath with lungs rather than gills, gave birth to live young, and fed their calves with milk. Aristotelian categories remained significant until the seventeenth century when his classical authority was challenged by naturalists such as John Ray, who dissected a porpoise in 1671 and felt it resembled swine much more closely than any fish. The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, who invented the way we name species, created the new class of Mammalia, from the Latin ‘mammae’ or breasts, in 1758. He initially classified whales as fish, but later decided they were mammals; it is possible that worrying about how to classify whales might have led Linnaeus to coin the class of mammals.3 Modern naturalists accepted whales were mammals and started to ask questions about their evolutionary lineage. In the last few decades a combination of fossil finds and genetic analysis has underpinned new reconstructions of a remarkable story.

Millions of years ago, the decision of a hoofed, land-dwelling creature to take to the water led to new ways of being. According to evolutionary biologists, we know the animal’s modern kin as bison, giraffes, alpacas, camels, hippos, goats, and cows. Originating in the early Eocene starting 56 million years ago, these animals all bear down on two of five toes that have evolved into hoofs. By the middle Eocene nearly 48 million years ago, the descendants of the one-hoofed herbivore went from living, loving, and birthing on land, to splashing about at the sea’s edge eating fish, and often swimming around the coasts of the region we know as South Asia. Although adept at powering through the water with just its feet, the wolf-sized creature coupled and gave birth to live young on land. No one knows why the water first drew the creature’s attention, but hunger and the promise of food seems a likely reason. Future descendants permanently inhabited South Asian waters for about 4 million years, before slowly moving to new coasts around Africa, and then further afield to the Americas. By 38 million years ago, the land-dweller’s descendant was fully adapted to a life aquatic. Later named Dorudon, the animal’s bones were cocooned in blubber in a relatively streamlined body with tiny vestigial legs. A powerful swimmer aided by a tail fanned into a fluke, Dorudon supplemented a fishy diet with other sea-dwelling creatures, while courting, mating, and giving birth in the water. This archaic creature migrated throughout the world’s waters, with kin and descendants leaving fossil remains in present-day Pakistan, Egypt (where they were first found), Western Sahara, the United States, and New Zealand. 4

Dorudon ’s descendants survived an extinction event between 33.9 and 33.4 million years ago marking the new Oligocene epoch, and shaped the new lifeways we call whales. These beautiful creatures are streamlined, almost hairless, with no visible hind limbs, and rely on powerful tails to speed through deep waters – they are therefore a far cry from their hoofed ancestor. They split into baleen whales, formally Mysticeti, and toothed whales, formally Odontoceti, whose closest living land relative is the hippopotamus.5 Baleen whales are named after the bristly plates lining their mouths. Made from keratin, the same protein as your fingernails, rhino horns, and bird claws, this ‘whalebone’ forms an intricate filter-feeding system. Feeding baleen whales open their mouths, capture large gulps of water, and then force this water outwards to extract krill and plankton for ingestion. Despite subsisting on such tiny organisms, one of their kind grows into the largest animal ever known: the blue whale. Toothed whales feast on ocean dwellers such as fish, seals, and penguins, and include orcas, dolphins, and sperm whales. For millions of years, whales turned the energy they ate into bone, baleen, and blubber, helping them survive ocean life. Unfortunately, those adaptations were more highly valued by humans than were living whales.

Whales were so vulnerable to human acquisitiveness that modern hunting almost eradicated innumerable ways of being a whale. The historian Graham Burnett traces scientific interest in whales throughout the twentieth century in his monumental book The Sounding of the Whale (2012). He identifies several distinctive phases in ‘intensive commercial whaling’ that almost led to their extinction.6 He notes, from the medieval period onwards, but particularly between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, that the French, Dutch, and British commercially hunted bowhead and right whales in northern waters around Western Europe. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly between the 1820s and 1860s, whalers hunted sperm whales and right whales in southern waters across the Indian and Atlantic oceans, as made infamous by Herman Melville’s novel tracing Captain Ahab’s disastrous obsession with killing a sperm whale in Moby Dick (1851). Until the mid-nineteenth century most whale species survived human predation. Right whales in the Northern Atlantic were the exception because they were hunted to commercial extinction, meaning they were no longer a viable species for making a profit.

Many ways of being a whale were on the brink of extinction in the later nineteenth century as whalers gained a devastating new advantage. For centuries, whales met their deaths when caught off-guard by hunters at close quarters, but new technologies expanded the hunters’ range. In 1870 the Norwegian shipping magnate Svend Foyn patented the grenade harpoon. Shot from a cannon aboard the ship, the barbed harpoon embedded itself in whale flesh before releasing a lethal blast. Whales increasingly faced an enemy equipped with greater firepower striking from a bigger distance. Rorquals are a subset of baleen whales that include fin, humpback, minke, and blue whales. They evaded early whalers through speed but could not outpace grenade harpoons. Soon, the North Atlantic brimmed with ships commercially hunting rorquals. Once struck, whales were pumped full of air, tied to the side of ships, and towed to coastline factories for processing, turning entire harbours red with blood. Men stripped whales of their blubber by cutting it away from the inner muscle, and specialist slaughterers further dismembered the half-stripped bodies. For decades, harvesting whales was checked by how quickly bodies were taken ashore for processing before they putrefied. This constraint disappeared when whaling ships were turned into gargantuan floating factories in the 1920s. Harpooned whales were winched through a gaping rear orifice, via a slipway on to the deck, rid of their blubber, butchered, and boiled, in unchecked, industrialized slaughter. The process preserved blubber into fat stable enough for storage, transportation, and profitable exchange. Even the biggest species were rendered into commodities with brutal efficiency: a mature blue whale could be sliced up into saleable fragments within an hour. Freed from shorelines, whalers roamed the high seas in search of diminishing quarry.

Whales faced increasingly perilous journeys through Northern Atlantic waters teeming with armed men. Many hunted species migrate from tropical waters where they were born in winter, to spend summers feeding in much colder northern and polar regions. Whales’ bodies archived the increasingly distressing and dangerous journeys. The hormone cortisol is released under stress, making its presence a useful way to track how bodies respond to perceived threats, whether predators or environmental pressures. One recent study tracked cortisol levels in fin, humpback, and blue whales over the twentieth century. Scientists observed cortisol levels were higher during the Second World War and years when whalers successfully caught substantial numbers, such as the 1920s, 1950s, and 1960s, suggesting much higher levels of stress in these years of intense exploitation.7 Whales survived the onslaught through luck and, remarkably, changing migration routes and intergenerational learning. Recently, a group of biologists examined the logbooks of American whaling ships to analyse sperm-whale kills. Collating data from nearly 78,000 days of voyaging, the logbooks revealed that whalers entering new waters were relatively successful at first, but within a few years their strike rates declined by as much as 58 per cent. Experienced hunters believed whales defended their lives by attacking aggressors or hurtling through the waters upwind of approaching ships. The study corroborates these accounts and suggests sperm whales were learning to avoid whalers, and sharing this knowledge among themselves.8

The responses of whales to human exploitation offer ethical and historical lessons. Even if we recognize other living beings as sentient and complex, we still potentially underestimate their abilities in many senses. We need to recognize the resulting ethical compromises and violations we make, especially when living beings face uncertain futures caused by our own lifestyles. As historians, it also challenges us to write about animals as historical agents whose ways of being are worthwhile in their own right, with important consequences for our shared histories.

Unfortunately, despite whales developing strategies to avoid human exploitation, the expansion of commercial whaling endangered many species in the nineteenth century. Humans turned whales into a remarkable variety of profitable commodities including corsets, fertilizer, pet food, lamp oil, margarine, scrimshaw, perfume, car wax, lipstick, shoe polish, animal feed, machine lubricants, and scientific specimens. Scientists and whalers alike worried about depleting stocks, but the trade continued. Within decades, humans hunted to near extinction lifeways that had endured for millions of years. Whales were prized scientific specimens coveted by museum curators, owing to their sheer size and imperilled status, including at the Natural History Museum in London.

London’s Ark

Richard Owen dreamed of presiding over a dead ark.9 A renowned naturalist and anti-Darwinian, he took up a post curating at the British Museum in 1856.10 At ‘every opportunity’ he solicited donations from contacts ‘travelling abroad’ and ‘intelligent settlers’ in ‘several colonies’, leading to acquisitions of ‘the Aye-Aye, the Gorilla, the Dodo, the Notornis, the maximised and elephant-footed species of Dinornis, the representatives of the various orders and genera of extinct Reptilia from the Cape of Good Hope, and the equally rich and numerous evidences of the extinct Marsupialia from Australia, beside such smaller rarities as the animals of the Nautilus and Spirula’.11 Owen was exasperated by the difficulty of showcasing his triumphs in the museum’s cramped quarters and diligently campaigned for either a cavernous two-storey extension to the British Museum or a new building in South Kensington.12 He regarded the lack of a dedicated national Museum of Natural History as a scientific and political disgrace.13 He insisted a national collection ought to provide a comprehensive visual encyclopaedia of the entire natural world, including male, female, and juvenile specimens of every species. His ideal ark would exhibit the fullest ‘extent and variety of the Creative Power’.14

Owen’s natural history fused science, faith, and empire. After bitter public spats with politicians and scientists who criticized the plans, Owen’s dreams were largely fulfilled with a new building in South Kensington. Originally known as the British Museum (Natural History), London’s Natural History Museum is the best-known building by the architect Alfred Waterhouse.15 On its opening in 1881, the Saturday Review praised Waterhouse for his ‘beautiful Romanesque building’ and explicitly singled out the megatherium and plesiosaurus as noteworthy specimens, because ‘few objects [are] so exciting to the imagination as these colossal fragments of antediluvian life’.16 The building’s imposing façade still dominates its urban landscape, even without the statue of Adam which once adorned the gable, but was toppled during the Second World War. Eve was due to join him, but never did. In its opening year, Owen delivered the Presidential Address of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He traced the museum’s origins to ‘Sir Hans Sloane, M.D.’ and the ‘lucrative practice of his profession in the then flourishing colony of Jamaica’.17 Owen was right to pinpoint the museum’s early Caribbean roots.

The origins of London’s Natural History Museum lie in the covetous passions of a wealthy physician. Hans Sloane settled in London a year after qualifying as a physician in 1683.18 Tending London’s wealthy and learned gentlemen helped Sloane create new social and intellectual networks with distinguished men such as the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, a founding member of the Royal Society. Sloane quickly acquired fellowships of the Royal Society and Royal College of Physicians. In 1685 he served as personal physician to the new governor of Jamaica, the Duke of Albemarle. The duke, duchess, and Sloane were met with a gun salute as they arrived on the island in 1687. Sloane managed the duke’s health while treating other colonists, and enslaved West Africans, although he frequently dismissed their medical complaints as work-shy fabrications.19 He roamed across the island, collecting as many natural history specimens as possible, including human bones from burial sites he believed were used by the Taíno.20 His collector’s thirst might never have been slaked, but the duke died within a year on the island. Sloane, the embalmed duke, and widowed duchess set sail for England in March 1689.21

Sloane’s Caribbean connections were erased for decades by historians, with one account describing his Jamaican sojourn as his ‘greatest adventure’.22 More recently, the historian James Delbourgo’s painstaking research reconstructs the multiple ways in which Sloane’s collecting of flora, fauna, and ‘humana’ depended upon empire and enslavement.23 From the fifteenth century onwards, Spanish colonial powers devastated Jamaica’s first inhabitants, the Taíno, who called the island Xamayca, and established the practice of importing and enslaving Akan peoples, from present-day Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, to cultivate cotton, Indigo, and tobacco. Caribbean English colonies were established throughout the seventeenth century. In quick succession, the English claimed St Christopher in 1624, Barbados in 1627, Nevis in 1628, Montserrat and Antigua in 1632, and Jamaica in 1655.24 Sloane arrived in a colony with a rapidly increasing population of English colonists and enslaved West Africans, forced to till the island’s rapidly expanding sugar plantations. Enslaved peoples were legally transformed into chattel property that might be bought, sold, and inherited by a series of Slave Codes. First passed in Barbados in 1661, with further legislation in 1676, 1682, and 1688, these codes created a racist complexion-based dichotomy between Europeans and Africans, facilitated the expansion of Britain’s violent trade in trafficked peoples and new plantation-based economies, all during Sloane’s lifetime.25

As Sloane settled back into London life, his earnings, marriage, and investments funded his collecting. The heiress and widow Elizabeth Langley Rose married Sloane in 1695. She inherited the estates of her father and her first husband, who owned extensive Jamaican properties tilled by enslaved West Africans. Marriage legally transferred her wealth into Sloane’s ownership. Delbourgo’s analysis of surviving household accounts reveals a direct income for Sloane of over £7,145, more than £600,000 in today’s terms, from sugar plantations, but notes this is probably a conservative estimate due to incomplete records. He argues that Elizabeth’s total share of her father’s estate was probably closer to £40,000, or over £3 million today, given that her husband’s estate received about £4,000 per year, or nearly £480,000 in today’s money. Sloane’s coffers also swelled with profits from imperial investments in ventures such as the South Sea Company, which sold enslaved peoples in Spanish America, and the East India Company, which informally controlled India until the Company was dissolved following the Indian uprisings of 1857.26 Sloane corresponded with middlemen across the British Empire, who redirected treasures to his home as gifts, favours, and reciprocal exchanges.27 His research was published in two folio volumes as Voyage to the Islands Madeira, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers in Jamaica with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees, Four-Footed Beasts, Fishes, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, etc. of the Last of Those Islands (1707–25). Sloane profited from empire in multiple ways, even when comfortably ensconced at home, and contemplating his collection’s afterlife.

Sir Hans Sloane died in 1753 after amassing an immense personal collection. His executors’ tally noted a library of 50,000 books and manuscripts, and more than 78,000 artefacts including a herbarium of 334 volumes, about 32,000 medals and coins, prints and drawings, precious stones, antiquities, shells, crystals, fossils, minerals, crustaceans, serpents, birds, stuffed animals, insects, curios from peoples all over the world, human remains, and over 2,000 ‘Miscellaneous Things’.28 Sloane bequeathed his treasures to the nation on condition that they were housed together in a free public museum, with his heirs paid a fraction of the collections’ worth in the total sum of £20,000 by the government. His plans were so unusual they are often credited with giving rise to the concept of the public museum. Parliament pleaded empty coffers and Sloane’s desire lingered unfulfilled for months until a public lottery finally raised the funds. His collections formed the core of the new British Museum.29 God’s works of Creation and humanity’s works of artifice resided together in the British Museum until the arrival of its first Superintendent of Natural History, Richard Owen.

Owen foregrounded extinct and endangered species as sources of political and imperial pride. The connection to Sloane and Jamaica simply facilitated ‘The greatest commercial and colonizing empire of the world’ in representing ‘the march of civilisation which a Public Museum of Natural History embodies’.30 Convinced that extinct beasts were among the most popular attractions, Owen wished visitors ‘the easiest transit from the specimens of existing to those of extinct animals’.31 His preferred centrepiece was an imperilled whale. A devout man, perhaps Owen was inspired by the Book of Genesis, in which God created great whales and other fish and fowl on the fifth day of Creation after the waters miraculously burst forth.32 Owen believed the sheer size of whales exemplified ‘the power of the creator’. Acquiring a specimen was an urgent task owing to their ‘rapidly diminishing numbers’ and likelihood of ‘utter extinction’.33 Owen predicted an endangered cetacean would rival any extinct species in other national collections: ‘Saint Petersburg justly boasts of the stuffed skin of its unique Mammoth: Madrid was as famous for its once unique Megatherium. Any capital in Europe would be eagerly visited by the Naturalist if a single specimen of the extinct Dodo were preserved in its national museum …’34 The naturalist William Henry Flower succeeded Owen and served as the museum’s first Director from 1884. He rejected Owen’s dated grand schemes and quickly used the galleries to tell novel stories of empire, evolution, and extinction.

In the mid-1870s an Atlantic blue whale gave birth to a daughter after a year-long pregnancy. The mother nursed her daughter with rich milk, and she rapidly gained weight for months in warm southern waters. Once ready, the closely bonded pair travelled to colder North Atlantic waters, probably taking about six weeks to migrate over 6,000 kilometres (3,728 miles). Their journey was a practical necessity and opportunity for the mother to teach her daughter the migratory routes she would traverse annually for life. When roughly fifteen years old, the daughter may have birthed and tended her own calf as she explored warmer waters, possibly around the Azores, Cape Verde Islands, and Mauritanian coast.35 Wandering north one spring, the young whale skimmed too closely to Irish shorelines and beached in Wexford Harbour.36 She struggled to free herself for days as the locals watched over her and a flurry of press reports tracked her plight. The fisherman Edward Wickham spotted her ‘rolling and beating the waves in a struggle apparently to get off the sandbank’ on Wednesday, 25 March 1891.37 Despite desperate efforts she remained stranded. On Friday, Wickham used a makeshift harpoon to ‘end her troubles’ and the sea was ‘dyed with the blood’.38

Reports of the young whale’s demise quickly reached Flower, who eagerly took advantage of the chance to add a blue whale to the museum’s collections.39 Observers estimated that her length reached 25 metres (82 feet), with flippers of around 3.2 metres in length by 0.7 metres wide (10.5 by 2.5 feet).40 A whaler for the Anglo-Norwegian Fishing company believed her valuable carcass might yield ‘eight and a half tonnes of oil, three tons of guano, and five hundred weight of whalebone’ worth over £200, or more than £16,000 in today’s terms.41 Quickly named the ‘Wexford Whale’, she was auctioned in April. The chairman of the Wexford Harbour Board made the winning bid of £111, but further enquiries secured the whale for the Natural History Museum. The baleen and skeletal remains were sold for an offer of £200, with final settlement of only £178. In May 1891 the Wexford Whale arrived in London.

Flower reconfigured the central hall to showcase whales in peril within broader chronicles of life’s evolution. The Wexford Whale languished in storage for decades, while Flower placed a sperm-whale skeleton in the centre of the nave and filled the side-chapels with specimens designed to showcase evolutionary variation among species, including plants, a cross-section of sequoia, pigeons, fowls, insects, mammalian skeletons including a human, sloth, porpoise, baboon, horse, teeth, and a stuffed black leopard exhibiting melanism.42 Flower’s interest in cetaceans extended beyond their magnificent visual appeal. His contemporaries were intrigued by the origin of cetaceans and contemplated two distinct possibilities: carnivorous, placental mammals or hoofed herbivores. Flower hesitantly favoured extinct hoofed ancestors with a seal-like intermediary, but recognized the debate was shrouded in ‘the greatest obscurity’.43 He admired how evolution granted whales a remarkable ‘perfection of their structure and their magnitude’, but worried these ‘fatal gifts’ would rapidly lead ‘to their extinction’ at the hands of ‘civilised man’.44 Flower’s concern was unusual. Many species, whether whales, bison, or passenger pigeons, were once so abundant that their extermination seemed implausible. As their populations waned, rarity made specimens more difficult to procure, profitable to sell, and desirable to acquire among collectors, while protective measures were rarely implemented. After the First World War, whales acquired new guardians.45

Fighting for Hope

The plight of whales alarmed few in the early twentieth century as much as the zoologist Sidney Frederick Harmer. The fourth Director of the Natural History Museum between 1919 and 1927, Harmer considered commercial whaling the chief threat to whales and serious enough to lead to their extermination. He had founded the Stranded Whales Programme in 1913 to systematically collect beached whales for scientific study. Harmer’s initiative established the museum as a significant site for cetacean research, and it continues to be a globally important resource. Renamed the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme in 1990, it holds 6,000 skeletons and tissue samples, amassed from hundreds of strandings and expeditions, in an off-site storage facility designed to accommodate the colossal skeletal fragments.46 Harmer penned official reports warning the British government of declining numbers of whales. In 1915 one report submitted to the Colonial Office identified a rapid decline in the number of humpback whales caught, and an increase in the number of fin and blue whales. Harmer inferred whalers were increasingly pursuing fin and blue whales after nearly exterminating humpbacks. The Colonial Office regarded Harmer’s gloomy predictions with scepticism and cited more optimistic experts to counter his claims. Undeterred, Harmer called for fresh research to assess extant whale populations. While officially downplaying Harmer’s predictions, the Colonial Office understood that the whaling industry might be endangered. It supported several research expeditions in the 1920s to assess numbers, noting they would be useful ‘from an imperial point of view’.47

Harmer regarded government-sponsored expeditions to protect commercial whaling as important opportunities for scientific research. Scientific links with industry or the military are hardly rare within the history of science; in Harmer’s case, he was dependent upon a governmental desire to protect stocks of a natural resource, and the broader economic value of whales, to unravel even basic questions about cetacean life. Naturalists bitterly disputed the origin of whales and knew little about their natural history. Government-sponsored expeditions developed new techniques to age hunted whales, and used estimated ages to predict population health. This research established that hunters were routinely catching immature whales by the 1930s. Just as Harmer feared, shifts in the species and age profiles of commercial catches suggested profoundly harmful industrial over-exploitation and plummeting numbers.48 Graham Burnett argues that such close associations created a ‘commensal relationship’ between commercial whaling and scientific research. As a record annual harvest of 28,000 whales were caught between 1930 and 1931, Harmer fought to convince others of impending extermination, and the Wexford Whale was removed from storage.49

The Wexford Whale was the first specimen suspended from the ceiling of the museum’s new Whale Hall in 1934.50 The hall was commissioned in 1929 and completed in 1932, but the economic woes of the Great Depression forced delays. The Whale Hall exhibited its occupants as endangered from the outset. The spine of the Wexford Whale was articulated into a lifeless straight line, in a pose commonly used by museums. She was accompanied by a bowhead whale, grey whale, North Atlantic right whale, and sperm whale.51 Press reports enthusiastically approved of the ‘new quarters’ as ‘more suited’ to the cetaceans’ ‘vast size and dignity’.52 Just four years after the opening, a bottlenose whale found in the River Trent was shot and taken to the Natural History Museum. The museum was reportedly keen on the acquisition because it was ‘a rare specimen of a species which is fast becoming extinct’.53

A painted model of a blue whale hung below the Wexford Whale’s skeleton. The model stretched to 93 feet (28.3 metres) and was built by the taxidermist and modeller Percy Stammwitz and his son Stuart. Percy confessed ‘It has been my ambition to have a go at the blue whale for some time … and I have worried the officials to make one. Now that I’m going to do it I feel a little appalled by the undertaking.’54 Percy’s apprehension was well founded. Stuffing and modelling whales was exceptionally tricky. Whale skin is a delicate sheath that is notoriously difficult to remove and preserve because it deteriorates so quickly after death. In 1865 a young blue whale was stranded on the Swedish coast, near Gothenburg. August Wilhelm Malm managed to procure the carcass and spent weeks preparing the skin and skeleton. The Malm Whale remains one of the few mounted whale specimens with real skin in the world, and the only blue whale. These difficulties made realistic models difficult to make and highly valued. In 1907 the American Museum of Natural History in New York unveiled a model of a blue whale. Scientists used a carcass in Newfoundland to make casts, photographs, paper templates, scale models, and innumerable measurements, to recreate the model. It was unveiled to great fanfare as the museum proudly announced the manufacture of an authentic leviathan.55 In contrast, Percy Stammwitz modelled his blue whale on site. The Wexford Whale and Percy’s rendition of her living form remained in the Whale Hall, later renamed the Mammal Hall, for decades.

Awareness of declining whale populations prompted new regulatory measures. The Geneva Convention for the Regulation of Whaling was signed under the auspices of the League of Nations in 1931. Taking four years to come into force, the legislation tried to license whaling vessels, enforce the collection of statistics from all catches, and protect baleen whales by ensuring hunters were paid by the overall value of their catch, rather than by the total number of carcasses. The Convention was relatively ineffective, especially as some nations ignored it altogether, but it remains a landmark for establishing the principle of the international regulation of whaling. The League of Nations added further restrictions in 1938, including on killing humpback whales in the Antarctic and protecting whales in Antarctic waters from all hunting. Maximum catch limits were first introduced in 1944. They were measured in Blue Whale Units (BWU): a single blue whale equated to two fin whales, 2.5 humpbacks, and six sei whales, with hunters allowed to catch up to 16,000 BWU.

Early efforts yielded the signing of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) in December 1946. It established the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to secure international cooperation in ‘safeguarding’ the ‘great natural resources represented by whale stocks’ for ‘future generations’. The language of management and future harvests reveals the preoccupation of diplomats with protecting a valuable commodity in order to ensure ‘maximum sustainable yields’. 56 The ICRW exempted the killing of whales for scientific research, without specifying the limits of legitimate enquiry, thus creating an easily exploited ambiguity. The IWC was founded amid broader optimism about wildlife conservation after the Second World War, but the Commission lost credibility as whale populations continued declining in the 1960s.57 Modern nations initially regulated whaling to guard the economic value they extracted from cetaceans, but attention slowly turned to protecting ways of being a whale.

Perceptions of whales as gargantuan brutes of great economic value were transformed during the Cold War. Eagerness to understand communist enemies stimulated research in the human sciences, some of it funded by the United States military. The physician and psychoanalyst John C. Lilly established his research career by studying the subjectivity and consciousness of enemy combatants, and he used the same techniques on bottlenose dolphins from the mid-1950s onwards. Lilly was convinced that dolphins possessed near-human intelligence and penned the book Man and Dolphin: Adventures of a New Scientific Frontier (1961). The book made extraordinarily grand claims about the possibilities of us communicating with other beings: ‘Within the next decade or two the human species will establish communication with another species: nonhuman, alien, possibly extra-terrestrial, more probably marine; but definitely highly intelligent, perhaps even intellectual.’58 These claims reflected a profound desire to understand consciousness, and quickly captured the public imagination as Lilly’s research hit the headlines.59 Significantly, it helped establish that cetaceans were intelligent, sentient beings.

Researching whale communication revealed they were songsmiths. In quiet waters, whalers occasionally heard whales as their calls reverberated through wooden hulls. Humpback whales were first recorded making sounds in 1952. New underwater listening technologies confirmed that whales made sounds falling into ‘three rough categories: short broad-band clicks, longer narrowband squeals, and complex sounds’ usually made up of ‘rapidly repeated clicks’.60 As further recordings accumulated, scientists tried deciphering the purpose of those sounds. The biologists Roger S. Payne and Scott McVay noticed that whales used ‘long, fixed sequences’ and argued they were not making ‘an almost endless variety of sounds’, but singing. Unlike birds whose singing lasts a few seconds interspersed with silence, humpbacks sang repeatedly without ‘breaking the rhythm of singing’ for many minutes.61 Payne and McVay were baffled by the songs’ purpose, but were also convinced of their existence and beauty. Songs of the Humpback Whale was released as a commercial recording in 1970 and climbed the bestseller charts.62 Whale songs further popularized the notion of these creatures as highly sociable, intelligent, and even wise beyond human capability. New perceptions of cetacean intelligence and communication changed why we value their ways of being.

Demands to ‘Save the Whales’ grew into the first global campaign of the modern environmental movement.63 In the early 1960s, hippies, Quakers, pacifists, and anti-nuclear activists found common cause in an anti-nuclear protest group called Greenpeace.64 There is no founding moment for the group, but the early efforts of campaigners Irving Stowe, Jim Bohlen, and Bob Hunter stand out. Moulded in the anti-nuclear and anti-Vietnam protest movements of the United States and disgusted with their country’s military belligerence, they crossed paths in Vancouver fighting for a future without nuclear weapons. They focused on protesting against the American military testing of explosives around the Aleutian Islands. As a new generation of activists joined Greenpeace in the 1960s, tensions sprang up about the group’s purpose. Although registered as the Greenpeace Foundation in 1971, the formalization belied considerable disagreement between an older guard intent on exclusively pursuing anti-nuclear campaigns, and a newer generation hoping to address broader environmental damage. Bob Hunter worried that tales of nuclear annihilation created only terrified inaction, and he sought an alternative focal point to motivate and inspire genuine change. He suspected that whales were ideal beings to inspire revolution. In 1973 he met the cetologist Paul Spong, an expert in whale communication who privately regarded their songs as language. Spong confided his belief to a sympathetic Hunter. Spong suggested chartering a boat to bear witness to the mechanized slaughter of whales and circulating the footage to global mass media.65 In the same year, politicians considered establishing a decade-long moratorium on commercial whaling to protect stocks, but the measure did not gain enough votes at the IWC. A year later, Irving Stowe passed away.

Greenpeace reconfigured itself as a broader group committed to environmental protection in the 1970s, beginning with whales. After weeks in search of Soviet whalers in the Pacific, Greenpeace activists aboard the Phyllis Cormack challenged Soviet whalers aboard the Dalniy Vostok in 1975. Greenpeace positioned themselves in between the floating factory and a group of whales. Hunter later recalled the gut-wrenching smell, streams of blood, and the ‘peculiar obscenity’ of realizing the floating factory ‘was a beast that fed itself through its anus, and it was into this inglorious hole that the last of the world’s whales were vanishing – before our eyes’.66 The activists assumed the Soviets would hold fire if blocked and so hoped to save the whales’ lives. They miscalculated. A harpoonist fired past them and the barbed weapon flew above their heads hitting a whale. Eventually, the Soviets left to pursue other quarry. The whole encounter was filmed by the Greenpeace activists, and later broadcast on the CBS evening news. The dramatic footage shows the harpoon within touching distance of the men as it hits the whale. Beamed into homes across the United States, the protest helped publicize the group’s activism across the world.

‘Save the Whales’ served as an environmental cause célèbre for more than a decade until the global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. The legislation signals a dramatic shift in why we protect whales. Regarded as little more than a natural resource for centuries, by the second half of the twentieth century whales were increasingly valued as ways of being intrinsically worthy of protection and of living their lives free of human interference. Despite continued killing on a much smaller scale, legislative protection and respite has pulled many species back from the brink of extinction. The populations of humpbacks and southern right whales have secured the greatest recoveries, but many species remain classified as Threatened, Endangered, or Critically Endangered on the IUCN’s Red List. Blue whales remain Endangered. Whales may no longer face industrialized global over-exploitation, but they do endure numerous other threats. Commercial whaling has largely stopped, but Russia, Norway, Iceland, and Japan have all reported to the IWC catching thousands of whales since 1985.67 Whales also suffer accidental entanglement in commercial fishing nets, noise pollution from increasingly busy marine highways, the loss and deterioration of habitats coupled with dwindling food supplies, and mortal wounds from collisions with ships. The global moratorium on whaling provides clear evidence that sustained and co-ordinated action can stall and reverse decline, but empire’s endlings need much more from us.

Curators at the Museum of Natural History in London renamed the Wexford Whale as Hope and moved her to a refurbished central hall. She replaced Dippy, the beloved plaster cast of Diplodocus carnegii who towered over visitors from 1979 until departing for a British tour of eight cities including Birmingham, Belfast, Cardiff, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Glasgow between 2018 and 2021.68 The museum announced Dippy’s demotion after securing a £5 million donation from the billionaire hedge-fund manager Sir Michael Hintze and Lady Dorothy Hintze to refurbish the central hall.69 Hintze Hall evokes several aspects of Richard Owen’s original plan for the museum. He imagined the East Wing as dedicated to palaeontology and the West Wing as showcasing zoology, with the central hall featuring an Index Museum brimming with typological specimens. The Index Museum is gone, but the division between extinct and living species resonates with the eastern Wonder Bays that trace the history of our planet, while the western Wonder Bays showcase endangered species.

The eastern Wonder Bays showcase a mastodon, Mantellisaurus, fossil trees, a banded-iron formation, and an Imliac meteorite. Among the largest animals alive during the Ice Age, the mastodon was assembled from a series of excavations in Missouri by Albert C. Koch in 1840.70 Koch’s articulated specimen was deliberately exaggerated in size, even adding extra vertebrae, and had tusks facing horizontally outwards. Initially nicknamed the ‘Missourium’, the beast was later promoted by Koch as the ‘Missouri Leviathan’, referring to the colossal beast described in the Biblical Book of Job. Koch argued that Native peoples remembered a ‘time when the first white settlers emigrated to the Osage country’ and the ground yielded ‘many large and monstrous animals … along and up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers’, and he often included Native figures in promotional posters to lend credence to his claims.71 The beast was exhibited across America before moving on to Europe, and was sold to Owen for £1,300 after a London sojourn in 1843. Owen removed Koch’s embellishments and reclassified the mastodon in the museum catalogue that records the acquisition: ‘The skeleton of the mastodon exhibited by Mr Koch with the rest of his collection, but set up anew with restorations.’72 Originally exhibited in the Fossil Mammals gallery, the mastodon was moved to the Mammal Hall with Hope in the 1980s, until both were transferred to Hintze Hall (Fig. 10.3).73 A Mantellisaurus is elegantly poised next to the mastodon. Living approximately 122 to 129 million years ago, this dinosaur specimen is the holotype, the original specimen from which a new species is named and described.74 Amateur palaeontologist Reginald Walter Hooley discovered ‘this very fine fossil’ in the ‘débris of Wealden Shales, after a fall of the cliff’ on the Isle of Wight in the same year as the outbreak of the First World War’.75 He classified it within the Iguanodon genus, but following a re-evaluation of its taxonomy, it was placed in the Mantellisaurus genus in 2007.76

10.3 Koch’s Missouri Leviathan, or the American mastodon.

The western Wonder Bays showcase species at risk from humans with a pair of giraffes, a blue marlin, Turbinaria coral, seaweeds, and a swarm of insects. The fronds of seaweed stand alert, while the insects swarm in a multi-species rainbow. An estimated 4 to 6 million species of insects exist, but only about a quarter or a third are classified. Even with this partial knowledge we know that many ecosystems would collapse without insects.77 They are crucial pollinators, as well as food for other species, yet insects are often neglected. The intricately folded Turbinaria coral is delicately studded with corralites, the tiny, usually invisible, indentations that hold individual polyps in living corals. The label informs visitors: ‘Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet, vital for life in the oceans and for many human communities.’ Nonetheless, ‘Environmental change, pollution and overfishing are disturbing the finely-tuned balance of reefs in unprecedented ways.’ Coral bleaching transforms once thriving reefs into threatened habitats, as with the Great Barrier Reef in the coastal waters of Queensland, Australia. The reef is slowly dying and losing its vibrant colours, most likely due to ocean acidification caused by climate change. The bleached Turbinaria represents this broader environmental destruction.78

The refurbishment of the central hall evokes Richard Owen’s plans for the national museum of natural history he so desperately wanted, while creating significant new conversations about extinction. The spectacular mastodon and Mantellisaurus honour Owen’s own contributions to British palaeontology, especially in naming the dinosaurs. The broad division between palaeontology and zoology is visible, but the strict division no longer remains. When Waterhouse designed the building he chose carvings of the extinct coelacanth and living passenger pigeon, but the bird became extinct while living coelacanths were found in 1938. There are also elisions between species that are extant and those extinct.

Humanity’s wake of extinctions and imperial dispossession are only implicit within the displays. The exact cause of the mastodon’s demise remains controversial, so the hall does not exhibit a single species indisputably eradicated by humans. This effectively underplays human culpability in the recent past, although the displays do make clear that environmental change is a factor and endangered species need help to recover. The giraffes silently call to mind this history. From the 1870s until the outbreak of the First World War, lions, elephants, leopards, rhinos, and Cape buffaloes were especially prized as trophies, as colonial officials, sportsmen, and collectors decimated African species.79 Giraffes were not among these ‘big five’ species, but hunting still diminished their numbers. In recent years, hunting has come under renewed public scrutiny as enthusiasts boast of their kills on social media to an often disgusted public. One of the most high-profile scandals erupted when an American dentist, Walter Palmer, killed Cecil the lion in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, in 2015, having reputedly paid $50,000 for the opportunity.80 Hunting continues to commodify and endanger many ways of being.

Richard Owen’s imperial chauvinism is clearly inappropriate for present-day audiences, but it would be unwise to forget or erase the imperial origins and connections of the collections in London’s Museum of Natural History. The banded-iron formation hints at extractive imperialism and environmental degradation. Banded iron is a major source of commercial iron and the museum’s sample was unearthed in Pilbara, northwestern Australia, by the multinational company Rio Tinto. It was sent to the museum after it was categorized as a commercially unviable source of iron ore.81 Rio Tinto faced considerable criticism for their devastation of the Aboriginal site of Juunkan Gorge. Their website features a prominent apology to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people and explicitly addresses the obligation to protect Aboriginal heritage in a recent report.82 Unfortunately, Aboriginal dispossession is only implicit in the displays. It is especially important that the imperial connections of museums are not forgotten or obscured to maintain a fantasy of authoritative political neutrality.

Museums were never politically neutral. In the early modern world, cabinets of curiosities helped collectors showcase their wealth and social standing, but only to a chosen elite. Hans Sloane’s desire to establish the British Museum as a state-owned public institution was a radical departure from the elitist private museums of the past, but it remained an attempt to keep his treasured collection intact and secure his legacy. Nineteenth-century campaigners hoped new civic museums would educate mass audiences. While a laudable aim, these campaigns were predicated on assumptions that the poorer classes required moral uplift and saving from their own vices. Museum champions believed educational and moral improvement depended on presenting museums as authoritative institutions. Writing in 1880 and just a year before the Natural History Museum opened in London, the art critic John Ruskin proposed that the ‘first function of a museum’ was ‘to give example of perfect order and perfect elegance, in the true sense of that test word, to the disorderly and rude populace’. Moreover, he continued, a ‘museum, primarily, is to be for simple persons. Children, that is to say, and peasants. For your student, your antiquary, or your scientific gentleman, there must be separate accommodation, or they must be sent elsewhere’ (original emphasis).83 Ruskin was influential in the debates about what a museum should be, and whom it should serve. As the museum movement expanded, exhibited artefacts were often incorporated into broader narratives about national and imperial success. Modern museums might not claim they are serving the ‘rude populace’, but their functions as educational spaces for the masses are historically rooted in past assumptions about class. Moreover, whereas some museums have tried proactively to address the imperial legacies they have inherited by being open about their roots or returning loot, others have been desperately slow to acknowledge their profoundly and inherently political nature.84

Renaming the central hall in the Museum of Natural History after the Hintze family reflects a complicated relationship between capitalism, philanthropy, and heritage tourism. Many wealthy donors have avoided criticism of exploitation, corporate bad behaviour, and unfettered capitalist accumulation under the guise of philanthropy.85 The backlash against the Sackler family is just one recent example. The family acquired an astonishing fortune from pharmaceuticals and donated extensively to some of the most prestigious cultural institutions around the world. However, they faced intense criticism and lawsuits for profiting from the over-prescription of addictive drugs such as OxyContin, and accusations of reputation laundering through high-profile donations. Likewise, the British Museum has faced controversy over its decision to accept donations from British Petroleum. Not only is BP one of the world’s largest companies trading in fossil fuels, its origins lie in imperial extraction. Established in 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to exploit natural resources in Persia, now Iran, it was ultimately renamed British Petroleum in 1954.86 These historically and politically significant connections are often disavowed by institutions, sometimes in a fight for survival, but they are of increasing interest to a new generation of visitors and campaigners. Hintze Hall encapsulates the difficult choices curators and institutions face as they decide how best to interrogate the roots of their collections for current and future audiences.

In 2019, Extinction Rebellion held a series of die-ins across the globe on Monday 22 April as Earth Day followed Easter Sunday. At 12:05 p.m. a hundred protestors lay under Hope, scattered around the floor of Hintze Hall, while about three hundred protestors lay under Dippy in Kelvingrove Gallery, Glasgow.87 Extinction Rebellion’s choice to die-in under Hope and Dippy indicates that both are international celebrities. As Hope hovers above the museum’s visitors, she shows what is possible when we forgo valuing species for their economic significance and instead consider them as ways of being worthy of life.

Epilogue
Extinction’s Futures

Imagine a way of life, taking millennia to come into being, and once embodied in thousands, millions, or billions of living bodies. Then imagine it reduced to a tentacle, dismembered wing, or stuffed skin. The indignity of a solitary relic is all that remains of many ways of being. Scientists fear many stored specimens ‘will often turn out to be all that remains of organisms that once thrived’.1 Our best hopes of knowing some lifeways ever existed lie entombed in museums and herbaria. Too many lifeways have already met that fate at human hands, including one I visited during a sweltering, record-breaking heatwave of the kind that is increasingly familiar.

Liverpool is well known to people the world over as the home of The Beatles. The beautifully preserved architectural heritage, particularly along the waterfront featuring the Three Graces – namely the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building, and Port of Liverpool Building at Pier Head – earned it UNESCO World Heritage site status in 2004. The Royal Albert Dock once buzzed with stevedores and merchants earning profits from trading cloth, coal, tobacco, sugar, and enslaved Africans during industrial development that quickened the pace of troubling interventions in earth’s geological processes. Their stories occupy the Maritime Museum, Museum of Liverpool, and International Slavery Museum along waterways leading to the ‘frayed Atlantic edge’.2 Within a short walk from the waterside, the city’s World Museum features an impressive range of artefacts bequeathed by nineteenth- and twentieth-century collectors, showcasing global cultures. One of the most important specimens usually resides away from the public’s gaze, but it is available to visit by appointment.

I met one of the museum’s curators in the foyer, who quickly led me through a side door to get away from crowds. After winding through flights of stairs and long corridors, we passed places brimming with the dead. One room featured two freezers named ‘Dodo’ and ‘Great Auk’, chilling their contents to minus 79°C, while other rooms were filled with rows of locked cabinets and shelves full of specimens. The museum is the final resting place of the Liverpool Pigeon. It is a unicum, or the only known specimen of a species. The curators kindly discussed the collections while I examined the pigeon. I asked if many people asked to see the bird and was surprised to learn it was a relatively common request. Recently, a local boy had asked to see the ‘real thing’ after learning about the bird’s final home in his city. The curators kindly, and carefully, removed the pigeon from its wrappings and laid the remains on a table for me.

To my untrained eye, the pigeon’s iridescent colours were reminiscent of the starlings whose murmurations transform the gloaming into an astounding sight. Glossy dark-green feathers adorned the back, while darker and duller feathers lined the underside. The elongated feathers around the neck formed a delicate ruff fit for a royal courtier. Along the back, the feathers turn from dark cinnamon to iridescent green, spotted with pale wedges shaped like guitar picks, giving rise to its informal name of spotted green pigeon. The wings still shimmered, intimating living vibrancy. The eye was eerily lifeless. White fibres filled the eye socket with only a tiny fleck of red hinting at the presence of the false red eye chosen by former handlers. The black beak tipped with dull yellow looked uncannily like a miniature dodo bill. Threads from two labels encircled a detached leg. Later, I learned that the original taxidermist mistakenly swapped the right and left legs, compounding the indignity.3 Originally mounted for show, the bird was later deposed and reconfigured into the less elaborate pose of a research skin. Sorrow rarely evades me when I encounter extinct lifeways, but realizing how little we know about this solitary specimen left me aghast.

The spotted green pigeon was first described by the physician and naturalist John Latham (Fig. 11.1). He helped establish the Linnean Society of London and was well known to the city’s scientific elite, such as the naturalist Joseph Banks who served as President of the Royal Society. Latham made his name classifying many well-known Australian birds, such as the emu, and studying the birds of India, Australia, and the Pacific with specimens he bought through connections with gentlemen like Banks. Latham’s ornithological enthusiasm sustained him as he wrote and illustrated A General Synopsis for Birds in his early forties and published it in three volumes between 1783 and 1785. Four decades later, a swollen compendium of ten volumes was published as A General History of Birds (1821–8) and dedicated to King George IV. Latham died thirteen years later aged ninety-six.4 Of the spotted green pigeon he observed:

11.1 The spotted green pigeon.

LENGTH twelve inches. Bill black, tipped with pale yellow: general colour of the plumage dark green, and glossy: the head and neck are darker than the rest, and of one plain colour: the feathers of the neck long and narrow, like the hackles of a Cock; every feather of the wings and scapulars tipped with a spot of very pale cinereous white, with a point running upwards, somewhat triangular: quills and tail black; the feathers of the first tipped with cinereous white, those of the last with ferruginous white, and even at the end: belly, thighs, and vent, dusky black: the legs are brown, and the shins covered half way with downy feathers: claws black.5

Intriguingly, Latham noted that two pigeon skins existed in the collections of Banks and General Major Davies. An army officer and dab hand with a paintbrush, Davies was a self-taught taxidermist with a passion for feathered souls. His collection included bird skins acquired through personal travel in North America and contacts in the Pacific. Auctioned after his death, the spotted green pigeon drew the keen eye and winning bid of the thirteenth Earl of Derby, Lord Stanley. In his personal copy of General Synopsis of Birds, where Latham notes the skin in Davies’ collection, the earl triumphantly scrawled ‘now in mine!’6 Ultimately, Stanley’s collections were donated to the city of Liverpool, forming the core of a new museum and forerunner of the current World Museum. Despite the acquisitive glee of a satiated collector, Stanley knew almost nothing of the spotted green pigeon.

No one knew where the Spotted Green pigeon once chanted its song, or who consigned it to an afterlife as dead treasure. Latham described the bird in English, losing the chance to name the species in Latin. Five years later, the naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin formally named the species Columba maculata. Despite these early efforts, not everyone was convinced the bird was even a species. Some proposed it was just a juvenile Nicobar pigeon. Others were convinced it was a rare abnormality rather than a natural kind. In 1898 the bird was formally reclassified as Caloenas maculata, which remains its scientific name. The shift placed the bird in the same genus as the flamboyantly tinted Nicobar pigeon, and the extinct Kanaka pigeon known only from partially fossilized remnants.7 The skin’s two labels memorialize the confusion (Fig. 11.2). One label classifies the bird as a Nicobar pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica) and traces the bird’s journey from the collection of a ‘Gen Davies’ to the Museum of Derby, now the World Museum in Liverpool. The ornate cursive script of the other label names the ‘spotted green pigeon’ (Columba maculata) on the authority of ‘Lath’. The contradictory labels highlight disagreement about the bird’s rightful place among its kin, and the processes by which living beings become prized commodities and material currency among global networks of collectors and curators.

11.2 Labels tracing the collection and classification of the Liverpool pigeon.

Growing scientific and historical interest in the spotted green pigeon yield only scant clues to the bird’s origins and first human name. In 2014 a team of scientists harvested the pigeon’s DNA from two feathers and used it to reconstruct the bird’s family tree. Historically, evolutionary family trees, or phylogenies, were based on observable characteristics such as outward appearance, physiology, and function. Phylogenies are now more commonly based on computerized statistical analysis of DNA to create numerous family trees and test which best explains the genetic similarity between organisms. Using that technique, the team proposed that the bird was a distinctive species, and that its closest relative is the Nicobar pigeon, and, at one remove, the extinct Rodrigues Solitaire and dodo, all originally from the Indian Ocean.8 The trio of extinctions also makes the Nicobar pigeon the closest living relative of the dodo. The team inferred the birds shared a common ancestor flying from island to island across the Indian and Pacific oceans. During the spotted green pigeon’s subsequent isolation, descendants formed the Columbidae family which includes all four species. Which islands? Early naturalists often presumed a Pacific origin for the spotted green pigeon based on the lost specimen owned by Joseph Banks, which is even more plausible given the relationship with the Nicobar pigeon.

Another clue suggests Pacific origins for the spotted green pigeon. The linguist and ethnologist Teuira Henry drew on her grandfather’s life to write about the history of Tahiti. Her grandfather, the Reverend John Muggeridge Orsmond, spent decades researching ancient Tahitians during his missionary work. He compiled his observations into a lost manuscript. Henry used her memories and grandfather’s notes to reconstruct the work and ensure its publication in a book called Ancient Tahiti in 1928. In discussions of local birds, she named one called ‘The titi, which cried “titi”, now extinct in Tahiti, was speckled green and white, and it was the shadow of the mountain gods.’9 The spotted green pigeon was probably extinct by the mid-nineteenth century, and perhaps as early as the 1820s, but Henry’s observation came from her grandfather’s notes so it might be the testimony of someone who saw, and heard, the living bird. After combing through dictionaries compiled by early missionaries, the conservationist Philippe Raust believes Henry’s description plausibly matches the little we know of the spotted green pigeon. If so, Tahitians may have named it tītī and ascribed it religious or cosmological meaning.10 Despite this possibility, the pigeon’s family connection to the Rodrigues Solitaire and dodo offers the intriguing possibility of South or Southeast Asian roots. Historical and scientific sleuthing provides tantalizing clues, but the pigeon’s origins will probably remain obscure until undisturbed remains are found and matched with the skin in Liverpool. The mystery of the bird’s origins is compelling, but to know so little about any way of being consigns it to a remarkably miserable fate.

Writing histories of extinction raises profound historical and ethical challenges. In the post-war era, as the history of science was established as a discipline, narratives of progressive enlightenment in which scientists made discoveries to draw closer to abstract truths about the natural world were the most common way of writing about scientific research. Historical theories that did not chime with modern scientific understandings were deemed wrong, while those that fell foul of present-day moral codes, such as racist or sexist ideas, were also often dismissed as pseudoscience. This approach is understandable. Narratives of discovery provide satisfying stories, but dismissing past scientific ideas as simply wrong or pseudoscientific creates two significant difficulties for understanding the history of such ideas. First, it assumes that past scientific knowledge must be judged according to current theories, instead of in its own historical context. Second, it protects the reputation of scientific knowledge as objective, or abstract, truth instead of as a means of making knowledge always rooted in specific, and shifting, historical circumstances. These assumptions make it virtually impossible to understand science historically, including the nature of extinction as an idea. In recent decades, and from the 1980s onwards in particular, historians of science have shown that placing science within its historical context provides a significantly richer understanding of how scientific knowledge was formed, circulated, and transformed.

Vanished has drawn on these insights to trace extinction as a shifting idea shaped as much by theology or global politics as by new scientific methods or evidence. That may feel like an uncomfortable or counter-intuitive approach, especially for anyone used to thinking about ‘real’ science as objective. For centuries, people contributing to scientific knowledge have claimed that they are objective observers using inductive reasoning to make sense of empirical findings. While this might seem superficially plausible, historians and philosophers of science have spent decades exploring how observing, collecting data, and theorizing are not neutral acts. Rather they are theory laden because they always depend on pre-existing expectations even by the most sincere and earnest truth seekers. When we explore the world around us, our expectations and assumptions shape the questions we ask, where we seek evidence, whose knowledge we regard as reliable enough to constitute answers, and the explanations that we are willing to entertain as making sense of the world. Claims of objectivity were, and can still be, an attempt to seek and assert authority; rather than taking these for granted, historians and philosophers of science have interrogated how scientific knowledge is made to reveal the profound importance of the cultural, social, and political contexts to which all knowledge is inextricably tied. Histories of extinction provide just one example of how intimately connected making natural knowledge was to deeply disturbing ideas about race, being human, life’s worth, and imperial politics.

Tracing how scientists, colonial officials, and writers used theories of animal extinction to narrate important historical shifts, from the expansion of European settler colonies to the loss of numerous ways of being, reveals an astonishing but often neglected thread in the making of the modern world. The later nineteenth century has often been associated with the rise of Social Darwinism, and the belief that races and nations were locked in a bloody struggle for survival. While Darwin’s legacy is crucial, many writers, scientists, and colonial officials discussed the future of humanity as a natural process of competition, conquest, and extinction long before Darwin’s ideas about natural selection were made public in 1859. By then, new ideas about extinction as a process inherent in the natural world were already well established and used to justify European settler colonialism as the outcome of the natural law of extinction. The dispossession of the original nations of Newfoundland, North America, and Australia were all written about as extinctions by naturalists and colonists steeped in a profound disavowal of violence. That erasure shapes the lives of nations forced to prove they still exist, like the Sinixt or Aboriginal Tasmanians, or Indigenous peoples across the world fighting for the return of their lands. Tracing these connections reveals how extinction-making, and scientific knowledge more broadly, were deeply entwined with, and embedded in, appalling intellectual and moral violence with legacies that still require reckoning and redress.

Many episodes of extinction, from prehistoric losses to more recent eradications, cast long shadows today. The historical conflation of animal extinction, colonial persecution, and the imposition of alien forms of kinship created lasting dispossession for Indigenous peoples in settler colonies across the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific. Many peoples struggle with the consequences of severed relationships with their rightful homelands and are campaigning for restitution. Others fight to prove they even exist as myths of extinction ossified into systematic neglect and political policies of removal or lack of state recognition. Meanwhile, the extraction and exploitation of natural resources, whether fur, feathers, coal, rubber, natural gas, petroleum, palm oil, or timber, generated extraordinary wealth for imperial powers while creating lasting ecological damage. Environmental catastrophes are already here for many nations who, historically or in the present, have contributed little to climate change but are now at the mercy of rising sea levels, flooding, extreme heat, and fires. We saw the urgency of that with the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan in 2022. This raises the pressing issue of whether heavily polluting nations or corporations will contribute fairly to offer reparation for their historically disproportionate contributions to creating our extreme climate and damaged worlds.

We are living through the extinction of many ways of being. The Baiji, or Yangtze dolphin, was declared functionally extinct in 2006. Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise, died on the Galapagos Islands in 2012. The West African black rhino, Holdridge’s toad, golden toad of Costa Rica, and ivory-billed woodpecker were among the many species declared extinct as I wrote this book. We face losing many more kinds without taking action; yet, spurred by panic, it would be exceptionally easy to continue historical dispossession without profound care in the rush to act. In the lead-up to the COP 15 summit in 2022, the United Nations launched a marketing campaign featuring Frankie the dinosaur. Advertisements showed Frankie gate-crashing a UN summit and begging for humanity to avert annihilation with the tagline ‘Don’t Choose Extinction’.

Recognizing that extinction is a choice is essential. Every time we save a way of being or mourn the passing of a natural kind, whether a species or otherwise, we make decisions rooted in our emotional attachments, or our perceptions of that natural kind’s value – whether commercial, aesthetic, or ecological. One of the best examples of that conundrum is the new Global Biodiversity Framework, committed to protecting 30 per cent of the planet by 2030. The policy might be rooted in laudable aims, but whether it truly constitutes justice for humanity or other species will depend on many other decisions about which 30 per cent will be protected and whether historically dispossessed peoples are expected to lose even more land in the process. Conservationists need to adopt radically different approaches informed by the history of their present practice to truly secure just policies.

Writing about extinction means living with restless ghosts. I began this book with more than a decade’s experience of reading scientific literature on race debating who counted as human, and insisting that some lives were worth less or worthless. Yet even this familiarity did not lessen the shock of encountering writers who proclaimed that extinction, especially of colonized peoples, was necessary, inevitable, or even desirable. Reading authors disavowing breathtaking slaughter as an inevitable, even providential, process meant confronting an extremely powerful fatalism, and tracing its afterlives. Reading scientific reports, newspapers, and colonial accounts was painful enough, but on many occasions I encountered traces of ostensibly vanished lives that only existed because their creators violated the wishes of the dead. I will never forget the moment of turning the page of a scientific article on extinction to face the horrific photograph of a woman’s corpse denied a burial because anthropologists believed she was the last of her race, or looking through an archival box full of documents and realizing that it also served as a casket for hair samples taken without consent from people barely acknowledged as human by anthropologists. Understanding the unnatural histories of extinction and empire that have created these archives and shaped our present means bearing witness to profound intellectual, moral, and physical violence, tracing its legacies, and acknowledging that redress is long overdue and necessary.

Everyone will have an endangered species or cultural practice whose loss they would grieve for more than any other. Whose loss would you mourn? What would you change in order to prevent that loss? As a young child, I wanted to be an osprey, meet the ancient trees of the world, and swim with whales and sharks, but nothing compared to the joy of living in a world with tigers. Deliberate persecution, hunting, and habitat destruction contributed to the extinction of Balinese, Caspian, and Javan tigers between the 1930s and 1980s, while the remaining six subspecies occupy just 5 per cent of their former range. Conservation efforts have led to glimmers of hope as tiger populations slowly rise in Nepal, China, and Thailand, but they are still declining elsewhere and fewer than 4,000 mature individuals are known to exist in the present.11 Knowing they might disappear, and potentially in my lifetime, has always been painful. Such cultural and emotional judgements underpin efforts to conserve any site, practice, or way of being. Untangling these concerns, and being aware of their roots in histories of extractive dispossession, indiscriminate consumption, and denial of Indigenous peoples’ rights, helps us to understand why extinction matters to us, and how best to tackle it with just policies.

Extinction is a political choice: histories of extinction offer opportunities to choose wisely. Writing more compelling accounts of the unnatural histories of extinction and empire making provides us with a crucial opportunity to avoid perpetuating dispossession and injustice in the rush to salvage and protect what remains. Despite the accelerating loss of lifeways, hope endures, but it requires a much more critical awareness of our inheritance and present responsibilities. Some of our predecessors bear greater culpability for past wrongs, while many shoulder larger obligations in the present by living lives on unceded lands or causing significantly greater harm to life on earth through our lifestyles. Yet, we all have a reason to choose a better future, whether through personal action, holding those with power to account, or supporting policies that honour multiple forms of recovery and redress. Recognizing the roots of the present moment is essential to securing justice not for the few, but for life itself. Transforming the current politics of crisis to an ethics of reciprocal care offers us a rare chance to imagine, and create, worthwhile futures.

11.3 An endangered Sumatran tiger in the hall of extinct species, Museum of Natural History, Paris.

For I cannot bear that one day the jungles of my ancestral homeland may no longer resound with the roar of the tigress.

Acknowledgements

Writing a book is a collaborative venture that always depends on the love, faith, support, and inspiration of others. I am profoundly grateful to an astonishing number of wonderful people who have crossed paths with me, or kept me company, as I wrote this book, especially in the shadow of horrific, even genocidal, violence in the global political arena.

Vanished began as a project on the notion of endangered peoples and grew into a much broader exploration of extinction. My ideas about extinction were nurtured as a postdoctoral research fellow within the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group. The late Peter Lipton was the first person to send me the job advert and encourage me to apply. His act of kindness came at a moment when I was deeply unsure of my future and it made all the difference. I remain grateful to him for helping to make the Department of History and Philosophy of Science such a wonderful community where I flourished, from my undergraduate studies right through to my postdoctoral research. Within the Department, I was profoundly conscious of how fortunate I was to be Jim Secord’s student. From the moment I first stepped into his office, his intellectual generosity, guidance, and unfailing kindness have helped many of my most cherished dreams come true. I first met him as an undergraduate studying the sciences and convinced that I would leave academia as soon as possible. His teaching inspired me to stay, and I eventually transitioned from being his doctoral student to working alongside him. For more than two decades Jim has transformed my life in the most beautifully unexpected ways, and crossing paths with him stands out as one of the greatest blessings of my life.

The Cambridge Victorian Studies Group was led by Mary Beard, Simon Goldhill, Peter Mandler, Clare Pettitt, and Jim Secord. My postdoctoral peers were Adelene Buckland, David Gange, Michael Ledger-Lomas, Astrid Swenson, Anna Vaninskaya, Daniel Wilson, and David McCallister. The doctoral scholars were Helen Brookman, Jocelyn Betts, and Rachel Bryant-Davies. I’m immensely grateful to them all for contributing to a truly exceptional and formative intellectual space and, in the case of David Gange, for the years we spent teaching and working together after the project ended. Without the group, I doubt I would have remained in academia or found the space and time to develop my interests in race, empire, and extinction in ways that mean so much to me.

I’m honoured and fortunate that so many wonderful people have offered invaluable advice and support over the years. Simon Schaffer and Sujit Sivasundaram have shaped and transformed my intellectual interests from my first encounters with them as a student to this project’s inception, and throughout its long gestation. I remain in awe of their many kindnesses for more than two decades. Ralph O’Connor has been as unfailingly generous and perceptive as ever at several turning points. Many people offered important insights and advice on individual themes or career advice, some without even knowing how important our correspondence or conversations were. I am thankful to Sara Ahmed, Jonathan Saha, Kate Nichols, Jim Endersby, Helen Macdonald, Stephanie Pratt, Anne Secord, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, Surekha Davies, Julia Laite, Catherine Hall, Margot Finn, Lucy Delap, Miranda Lowe, Dirk Moses, Heather Goodall, Martin Rudwick, Chris Manias, Lukas Rieppel, David Sepkoski, Jon Agar, Tara J. Hamling, Sara Butler, Nikesh Shukla, Alice Te Punga Somerville and Tom Stammers. I’m delighted that so many people invited me to speak about my research, especially Jenny Rampling, Joanna Radin, Persephone Pearl, and Rohan Deb Roy. They all invited me to present my research at crucial points in my writing. I’m also indebted to Daisy Larios at the IUCN archives, and Miguel Garcia at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney, for their help in making my archival trips so valuable.

In recent years, two events helped me to finish writing this book after long periods of fearing it might never happen. In the summer of 2023 I joined the University of Manchester to begin a much longed-for new chapter in my life. I’m especially thankful to Anindita Ghosh, Kerry Pimblott, Charlie Wildman, and Max Jones for helping me settle in to such a welcoming department. Shortly after I began, I organized an event called ‘In Her Wake’ to celebrate an extraordinary cohort of women who were the first of their heritage to be promoted to professorships in Britain. Early in my career, I realized how few women, especially like me, existed in British academia let alone the professoriate. As I searched for my sisterly predecessors, I found many women whose historic achievements were neglected or unknown even to themselves. I especially want to honour Mel Chevannes who in 1990 I believe was the first woman of her heritage to be promoted to a professorship in any discipline within Britain. In her wake, Elizabeth Anionwu, Lola Young, Heidi Safia Mirza, Olivette Otele, Naomi Standen, and Katherine Harloe were all the first of their heritage to be promoted to chairs in their disciplines. All kindly participated in the event, except Lola who was supportive but unable to attend. Each of these women, and likely many others who I do not know about, paved the path for my own success in being the first woman of my heritage to be a history professor within a British university. I also want to thank Claire Langhammer, Deanna Lynn Cook, Imaobong Umoren, and Saima Nasar who were wonderful co-hosts and made the event of ‘In Her Wake’ as special as it was.

I am obliged to the Leverhulme Trust and British Academy for supporting my research career, and especially for this book. The Leverhulme Trust funded my postdoctoral fellowship and awarded me a Philip Leverhulme Prize. The prize helped broaden the scope of the book, both through supporting my international archival research and providing the time to reconfigure the project from one focused on human extinction to a much broader range of subjects. The British Academy’s Mid-Career Fellowship provided the time I needed to recast the manuscript after a period of numerous obstacles prevented any progress. It was also my good fortune to be a Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries, at the University of Oxford, where I completed the manuscript. I’m especially grateful to Rachel Naismith whose kindness during my visit helped make it so fruitful.

I am thrilled that my agent Andrew Gordon, editors Laura Stickney and Kim Walker, and Penguin Press showed such faith in this project. Andrew and Laura were especially important for supporting this book in its most embryonic stages. Their expertise was invaluable in transforming my ideas into a proposal and complete manuscript, while Kim shepherded the book through the final hurdles. I’m also thankful to Fahad Al-Amoudi, Ruth Pietroni, Gavin Read, Richard Green, Eleni Lawrence, Richard Mason, and the entire publishing team for helping make my ideas into a tangible reality. Like so many young children who discovered the magic of reading, I treasured my Puffin books. My library still contains many volumes I bought as a child exploring new worlds. I could not be more thrilled that this book found its first home with Penguin Press.

Many of the most important people who helped make this book possible have never read a word of the manuscript, but their conversations, hugs, support (often over decades), and general ‘roarsomeness’ kept my own roars and refusals powerful and enduring in ways that they will likely never fully appreciate. With loving joy, I thank Benjamin Thomas White, Shahmimah Akhtar, Saima Nasar, Michell Chresfield, Kennetta Hammond Perry, Olivette Otele, Fariha Shaikh, Christienna Fryar, Meleisa Ono-George, Caroline Bressey, Gavin Schaffer, David Olusoga, Sarah Qidwai, Mobeen Hussain, Bal, Rosslyn Nelson, the late and much missed Tim Brighouse, Salina Begum, Noreen Jahangir, Uzma Mukhtar, Kev and Vicky Levell. I hope this book might help make the future better for the next generation, especially my niblings Ted, Rose, Jacob, Yusuf, Ruqayyah, Jibreel, Layaal and Rawaan.

My final, and greatest, thanks are to my family, especially Bob, Denise, Mamu, Umair, Atti, Umar, Khalid, and Sumera. Sumayyah and Sidrah have reminded me of, and kept me to, my purpose even when at my lowest ebb. Beloved Sufyan has kept my soul company through tribulations that only he understands. Vanished is dedicated to my late baji, abbu ji, and ammi ji, who are the root of my every blessing. Words cannot do them justice, but I pray my duas might.

Notes

Prologue

Anthony S. Cheke, ‘Speculation, Statistics, Facts and the Dodo’s Extinction Date’, Historical Biology 27, no. 5 (2015): 624–33; Julian P. Hume, ‘The Dodo: From Extinction to the Fossil Record’, Geology Today 28, no. 4 (2012): 147–51; Andrew Jackson, ‘Added Credence for a Late Dodo Extinction Date’, Historical Biology 26, no. 6 (2014): 699–701; David L. Roberts and Andrew R. Solow, ‘When Did the Dodo Become Extinct?’, Nature 426, no. 6964 (2003): 245. ↩

On the natural history of the dodo and solitaire consult Jolyon C. Parish, The Dodo and the Solitaire: A Natural History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012). ↩

Hugh E. Strickland and A. G. Melville, The Dodo and Its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and Other Extinct Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez and Bourbon (London: Reeve, Benham, and Reeve, 1848), 22, 5; A. Iwanow, ‘An Indian Picture of the Dodo’, Journal für Ornithologie 99, no. 4 (1958): 438–40; Ria Winters and Julian P. Hume, ‘The Dodo, the Deer and a 1647 Voyage to Japan’, Historical Biology 27, no. 2 (2015): 258–64; Emmanuel Richon and Ria Winters, ‘The Intercultural Dodo: A Drawing from the School of Bundi, Rājasthān’, Historical Biology 28, no. 3 (2016): 415–22. ↩

Cited in M. Nowak-Kemp and J. P. Hume, ‘The Oxford Dodo. Part 1: The Museum History of the Tradescant Dodo: Ownership, Displays and Audience’, Historical Biology 29, no. 2 (2017): 235. ↩

This history of the Oxford Dodo draws from Nowak-Kemp and Hume, ‘The Oxford Dodo. Part 1’; M. Nowak-Kemp and J. P. Hume, ‘The Oxford Dodo. Part 2: From Curiosity to Icon and Its Role in Displays, Education and Research’, Historical Biology 29, no. 3 (2017): 296–307; J. M. Warnett et al., ‘The Oxford Dodo. Seeing More Than Ever Before: X-Ray Micro-Ct Scanning, Specimen Acquisition and Provenance’, Historical Biology 33, no. 10 (2021): 2247–55. For photographs of the Oxford Dodo consult Warnett’s article or the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, ‘The Oxford Dodo’, accessed 22 May 2023, https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/learn-the-oxford-dodo ↩

I am drawing on the discussion of species in Thom Van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). ↩

Elizabeth A. Bell et al., ‘Potentially Biogenic Carbon Preserved in a 4.1 Billion-Year-Old Zircon’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112, no. 47 (24 November 2015): 14518–21. ↩

John J. Wiens, ‘How Many Species Are There on Earth? Progress and Problems’, PLOS Biology 21, no. 11 (20 November 2023): e3002388; Camilo Mora et al., ‘How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?’, PLOS Biology 9, no. 8 (August 2011): e1001127. Each year the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) publishes summary statistics of how many species it has evaluated as a proportion of the total number of known species, providing one of the most consistently updated routes to knowing how many species are known. For figures consult IUCN, ‘Summary Statistics: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species’, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 2023, https://www.iucnredlist.org/en. Known species can be explored on a digital tree of life at OneZoom, ‘Tree of Life’, OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer, accessed 21 April 2024, https://www.onezoom.org/introduction ↩

Mannfred M. A. Boehm and Quentin C. B. Cronk, ‘Dark Extinction: The Problem of Unknown Historical Extinctions’, Biology Letters 17, no. 3 (2021): rsbl.2021.0007, 20210007. On the potential of museum collections consult Christopher Kemp, The Lost Species: Great Expeditions in the Collections of Natural History Museums (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017). ↩

James S. Ormrod, ‘“Making Room for the Tigers and the Polar Bears”: Biography, Phantasy and Ideology in the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement’, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 16, no. 2 (2011): 142–61. ↩

IUCN, ‘The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species’, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 2021, https://www.iucnredlist.org/en; Ana Ratner, ‘What the Extinction Crisis Took from the World in 2022’, The Nation, 22 December 2022, https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/extinct-species-2022; Mark Kaufman, ‘These Animals Went Extinct in 2023’, Mashable, 27 December 2023, https://mashable.com/article/extinct-species-animals-2023 ↩

Clara de Massol de Rebetz, ‘Remembrance Day for Lost Species: Remembering and Mourning Extinction in the Anthropocene’, Memory Studies 13, no. 5 (2020): 875–88. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Names Going Extinct: These Are the Baby Names that Are Dying Out …’, Cosmopolitan, 4 February 2022, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/a28347489/uncommon-baby-names-going-extinct; Rachel Avery, ‘40 Baby Names Set to Go Extinct in 2023’, HELLO!, 24 October 2022, https://www.hellomagazine.com/healthandbeauty/mother-and-baby/20221024155022/baby-names-going-extinct-in-2023 ↩

‘Extinction’, Oxford English Dictionary. Even a cursory search for ‘extinct’ or ‘extinction’ in archival catalogues exhibits these usages in wills, letters, and pamphlets stretching back centuries. ↩

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movements, much older conversations about acknowledgement and reparations are gaining unprecedented momentum. The literature on these themes is vast, but some important histories of the moral and economic debt include: Eric E. Williams, Capitalism & Slavery (London: Andre Deutsch, 1964); Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Hilary Beckles, Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide (Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2013). For an articulation of these claims in the present consult Ta-Nehisi Coates, ‘The Case for Reparations’, The Atlantic, 22 May 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631 ↩

The best summaries of scientific theories of extinction are Mark V. Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009); David Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020). ↩

For examples of epic narratives consult Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts; Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking. In combination, Barrow and Sepkoski provide among the most detailed and authoritative histories on the idea of extinction within the life sciences. Barrow’s book is particularly commendable as the most exhaustive and nuanced history of the idea of extinction. Yet, precisely because those life sciences were deeply exclusionary, these narratives are centred on white male scientists. For examples of tragedy consult Norman Myers, The Sinking Ark: A New Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980); Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (New York: Liveright, W. W. Norton & Company, 2016); David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future (London: Allen Lane, 2019). The sense of a lost Eden looms large in many works calling for us to change our ways. The sense of urgency is well founded, as is the sense that humans may well have sown the seeds of their own destruction. For examples of travelogues consult David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions (New York: Scribner, 1996); Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014); Jules N. Pretty, The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Van Dooren, Flight Ways. Here, the authors combine broader meditations on extinction with accounts of their travels to see endangered species, or the last known sites of extinct species. Thom Van Dooren’s book is a particularly beautiful example of the environmental humanities, bringing together philosophies and anthropologies of extinction to think about our relationship with species at the ‘dull edge of extinction’ (passim). Microhistories of extinction focusing on individuals, whether single species or the last remaining individual, are common. For example, consult Mark Avery, A Message from Martha: The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and Its Relevance Today (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Tom Lawson, The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014). For the most magnificent account of the shifting meanings of extinction consult Ursula K. Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016). ↩

Chapter 1

On the geology of Big Bone Lick consult Kenneth Barnett Tankersley et al., ‘Quaternary Chronostratigraphy and Stable Isotope Paleoecology of Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, USA’, Quaternary Research 83, no. 3 (2015): 479–87. Keith Stewart Thomson, The Legacy of the Mastodon: The Golden Age of Fossils in America (Berkeley, CA: Yale University Press, 2008), 13. ↩

William Hunter, ‘Observations on the Bones, Commonly Supposed to Be Elephants Bones, Which Have Been Found Near the River Ohio in America: By William Hunter, M. D. F. R. S.’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 58 (1768): 35. ↩

Ibid., 35, 40. ↩

Ibid., 36. ↩

Ibid., 45. ↩

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London: John Stockdale, 1787), 65–6; Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 15–29. ↩

M. J. S. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 244. ↩

Malcolm Crook, ed., Revolutionary France: 1788–1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). ↩

On the importance of the French Revolution for the sciences consult: Maurice Crosland, Science under Control: The French Academy of Sciences 1795–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Robert Fox and George Weisz, ‘France: During the Long Nineteenth Century’, in Modern Science in National, Transnational, and Global Context, ed. Hugh Richard Slotten, Ronald L. Numbers, and David N. Livingstone, vol. 8, The Cambridge History of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 192–216; Martin S. Staum, Minerva’s Message: Stabilizing the French Revolution (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996); and Mary Ashburn Miller, A Natural History of Revolution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, 1789–1794 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). ↩

Crook, Revolutionary France. ↩

J. P. F. Deleuze, History and Description of the Royal Museum of Natural History: Published by Order of the Administration of That Establishment (Paris: A. Royer, 1823). ↩

For the most important history of the garden during the eighteenth century, including the revolutionary reforms, consult E. C. Spary, Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000). ↩

Ibid., 92–3, 158–221. ↩

Ibid.; Dorinda Outram, ‘New Spaces and Natural History’, in Cultures of Natural History, ed. Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord, and E. C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 249–65. ↩

Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science, and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984); Dorinda Outram, ‘Uncertain Legislator: Georges Cuvier’s Laws of Nature in Their Intellectual Context’, Journal of the History of Biology 19, no. 3 (1986): 323–68; Toby Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades Before Darwin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Outram, ‘New Spaces and Natural History’; M. J. S. Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes: New Translations & Interpretations of the Primary Texts (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997). ↩

Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, 19; M. J. S. Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology, repr. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts. ↩

Georges Cuvier, ‘Mémoire sur les espèces d’éléphant tant vivantes que fossiles’, Académie des Sciences, Mémoire 2 (1799): 1–22. Translated and reprinted in Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, 13–24, 22, 24. ↩

Cuvier, 1796, in Ibid., 28, 32. José M. López Piñero, ‘Juan Bautista Bru (1740–1799) and the Description of the Genus Megatherium’, Journal of the History of Biology 21, no. 1 (1988): 147–63; Helen Cowie, ‘Sloth Bones and Anteater Tongues: Collecting American Nature in the Hispanic World (1750–1808)’, Atlantic Studies 8, no. 1 (2011): 5–27. ↩

Cuvier, 1798, in Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, 36. ↩

Gowan Dawson, Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016). ↩

Cuvier, 6 October 1798, in Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, 35. ↩

The pterodactyl would now be regarded as a pterosaur. Cuvier, 17 November 1800, in Ibid., 53–5. ↩

Cuvier, 1804, in Ibid., 71. ↩

Ibid., 68–73. ↩

Rembrandt Peale, An Historical Disquisition on the Mammoth, or, Great American Incognitum, an Extinct, Immense, Carnivorous Animal Whose Fossil Remains Have Been Found in North America, 2nd ed. (London: E. Lawrence, 1803), 88. ↩

Ibid., title page, 69; Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 35–8; Ralph O’Connor, The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802–1856 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 31–69. After Peale’s museum went into decline, most of his collection was bought by P. T. Barnum and this particular specimen, known as the Masten mastodon, ended up in Europe and is now in the collections of the State Museum of Hesse, Germany, where it can still be seen by visitors. For the most complete history of the specimen, consult Paul Semonin, American Monster: How the Nation’s First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2000). ↩

Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Anne Secord, ‘Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire’, History of Science 32 (1994): 269–315; Larry Stewart, ‘Other Centres of Calculation, Or, Where the Royal Society Didn’t Count: Commerce, Coffee-Houses and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern London’, British Journal for the History of Science 32 (1999): 133–53; Sadiah Qureshi, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). ↩

Peale, An Historical Disquisition on the Mammoth, or, Great American Incognitum, 62. ↩

O’Connor, The Earth on Show, 31–46. ↩

Cuvier did not realize that Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s classification of the beast as a pachyderm and species name Mammut americanum preceded him in 1799. Blumenbach’s placement of the beast in the new genus Mammut that year remains used, but the term ‘mastodon’ is no longer used as the species does not share a common ancestor with elephants. ↩

Cuvier, 1806, in Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes, 96. ↩

Georges Cuvier, Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes, 4 vols (Paris: Deterville, 1812). Cuvier used an obsolete spelling for bones, which is now usually spelled ‘ossements’. ↩

M. J. S. Rudwick, ‘Georges Cuvier’s Paper Museum of Fossil Bones’, Archives of Natural History 27, no. 1 (2000): 51–68. Also consult Richard Owen, ‘Report to the Board of Curators of the Royal College of Surgeons on the Muséum D’Anatomie Comparée in the Garden of Plants, Paris’ (London: Royal College of Surgeons, n.d.), Royal College of Surgeons Archives. ↩

Deleuze, History and Description of the Royal Museum of Natural History, 250–1. ↩

In the final decade of the nineteenth century, a new gallery of palaeontology and comparative anatomy was built and explicitly organized around evolutionary theories; it retains much of its original organization to this day, with the beasts marching as they silently retrace the march of life in their deaths. In 1994 another vast gallery of evolution was added to the site, which theatrically tells the story of nature’s biodiversity. On the history and layout of the museum consult Claudine Cohen, ‘Exhibiting Life History at the Paris Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle (Nineteenth–Twenty-First Centuries)’, in Museums at the Forefront of the History and Philosophy of Geology: History Made, History in the Making, ed. G. D. Rosenberg and R. M. Clary, vol. 535, GSA Special Papers (The Geological Society of America, 2018), 117–29, https://doi.org/10.1130/2018.2535(08) ↩

Outram, Georges Cuvier; Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils; Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate. ↩

Roy Chapman Andrews, ‘Explorations in Mongolia: A Review of the Central Asiatic Expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History’, The Geographical Journal 69, no. 1 (1927): 1–19; Adrienne Mayor, ‘The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times’, in The First Fossil Hunters (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); Adrienne Mayor, Fossil Legends of the First Americans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). ↩

Cited in Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 42; Benjamin Smith Barton, Archaeologiae Americanae Telluris Collectanea et Specimina, or, Collections, with Specimens, for a Series of Memoirs on Certain Extinct Animals and Vegetables of North-America: Together with Facts and Conjectures Relative to the Ancient Condition of the Lands and Waters of the Continent (Philadelphia, PA: Printed for the Author, 1814). ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 43; James Parkinson, Organic Remains of a Former World: An Examination of the Mineralized Remains of the Vegetables and Animals of the Antediluvian World; Generally Termed Extraneous Fossils, vol. 1 (London: J. Robson etc., 1804), 6–14, 8, 11, 13; Michel Goedert and Alastair Compston, ‘Parkinson’s Disease – the Story of an Eponym’, Nature Reviews Neurology 14, no. 1 (2018): 57–62. ↩

Cuvier hinted at the possibility for reconciliation. This was made explicit by Robert Jameson who edited Robert Kerr’s translation in 1813 of the Discours Préliminaire. Buckland affirmed the possibility while adding arguments of his own. O’Connor, The Earth on Show. ↩

Ibid., 51–9, 63. ↩

Ibid., 71–117. ↩

M. J. S. Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 25–34; Tom Sharpe, The Fossil Woman: A Life of Mary Anning (Wimborne Minster: Dovecote Press, 2020). Mary the fossil hunter was the third daughter to bear the name after the death of two older sisters both called Mary. The monikers are from Gideon Mantell and Ludwig Leichhardt, respectively, cited in Hugh Torrens, ‘Mary Anning (1799–1847) of Lyme; “the Greatest Fossilist the World Ever Knew”’, British Journal for the History of Science 28 (1995): 257–84. ↩

Dennis R. Dean, Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Nicolaas A. Rupke, Richard Owen: Biology Without Darwin, rev. ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Hugh Torrens, ‘Politics and Palaeontology: Richard Owen and the Invention of Dinosaurs’, in The Complete Dinosaur, ed. Michael K. Brett-Surman et al., 2nd ed. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012). ↩

William Buckland, ‘Notice on the Megalosaurus or Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield’, Transactions of the Geological Society of London Series 2, 1 (1824): 390–6. ↩

Gideon Mantell, ‘Discovery of the Bones of the Iguanodon in a Quarry of Kentish Rag (a Limestone Belonging to the Later Greensand Formation) Near Maidstone, Kent’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 18 (1834): 200–1; Gideon Mantell, On the Structure of the Iguanodon, and on the Fauna and Flora of the Wealden Formation (London: Royal Institution of Great Britain, 1852), https://wellcomecollection.org/works/qx9x8b4w; Dean, Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs; Rupke, Richard Owen; Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam, 59–72. ↩

Richard Owen, ‘Report on British Fossil Reptiles. Part II’, Report of the Eleventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Plymouth in July 1841 (1842), 103. ↩

Adrian J. Desmond, ‘Designing the Dinosaur: Richard Owen’s Response to Robert Edmond Grant’, Isis 70 (1979): 224–34; Dean, Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs; Torrens, ‘Politics and Palaeontology’. ↩

M. J. S. Rudwick, Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992). ↩

O’Connor, The Earth on Show, 44. ↩

For the best introduction to the work consult James A. Secord, ed., ‘Introduction’, in Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell, Penguin Classics (London; New York: Penguin Books, 1997), ix–xliii. Also, Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam; Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time; O’Connor, The Earth on Show, 163–87. ↩

Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1830–3), 150. Also cited and discussed in Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 44–6. ↩

Lyell, Principles of Geology, vol. 2, 162–3. ↩

Richard Owen, ‘Notice of a Fragment of the Femur of a Gigantic Bird of New Zealand’, Transactions of the Zoological Society 3 (1842): 29–32. ↩

Dawson, Show Me the Bone, 95–132. ↩

Rupke, Richard Owen. ↩

Rule to Owen, October 1839, cited in Dawson, Show Me the Bone, 99. ↩

On Rule’s full involvement, I am indebted to Ibid., 95–132. ↩

Richard H. Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008). The Tasmanian naturalist Morton Allport sent specimens of thylacines and Aboriginal Tasmanians to national institutions, learned societies, and individuals all over the world in exchange for his admittance to prestigious scientific institutions. For more on Allport’s negotiations consult Jack Ashby, ‘How Collections and Reputation Were Built out of Tasmanian Violence: Thylacines (Thylacinus Cynocephalus) and Aboriginal Remains from Morton Allport (1830–1878)’, Archives of Natural History 50, no. 2 (2023): 244–64. ↩

The islands roughly represented the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. Anonymous, ‘The Crystal Palace, at Sydenham’, The Illustrated London News (7 January 1854), The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842–2003; James A. Secord, ‘Monsters at the Crystal Palace’, in Models: The Third Dimension of Science, ed. Soraya Chadarevian and Nick Hopwood (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 138–9; O’Connor, The Earth on Show, 279–88; Dawson, Show Me the Bone, 168–208. ↩

For a broader history, including visitor figures, consult, Jan R. Piggott, Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham 1854–1936 (London: Hurst, 2004); Kate Nichols, Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace: Classical Sculpture and Modern Britain, 1854–1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). ↩

For visitor figures consult, Piggott, Palace of the People. On the court of natural history, Qureshi, Peoples on Parade, 185–221. ↩

Richard Vaughan, ‘Hodge Upgrades Crystal Palace Park Dinosaurs to Grade I Status’, The Architects’ Journal, 7 August 2007, https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/hodge-upgrades-crystal-palace-park-dinosaurs-to-grade-i-status ↩

Chapter 2

Timothy D. O’Connor, ‘Native American Genomic Diversity through Ancient DNA’, Cell 175, no. 5 (2018): 1173–4; Ruth Gruhn, ‘Evidence Grows that Peopling of the Americas Began More than 20,000 Years Ago’, Nature 584, no. 7819 (2020): 47–8; Giulia Colombo et al., ‘Overview of the Americas’ First Peopling from a Patrilineal Perspective: New Evidence from the Southern Continent’, Genes 13, no. 2 (2022): 220. ↩

Unless otherwise indicated this history of Newfoundland settlement, colonization, and Beothuk ethnography draws heavily from James P. Howley, The Beothucks, or Red Indians: The Aboriginal Inhabitants of Newfoundland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915); Ingeborg Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996); Sean T. Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador: A History (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2009). Many of the primary sources were also collected and republished in Howley, The Beothucks. On Beothuk culture consult Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 278–9, 286–8, 393–411. ↩

Melanie Kuch et al., ‘A Preliminary Analysis of the DNA and Diet of the Extinct Beothuk: A Systematic Approach to Ancient Human DNA’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132, no. 4 (2007): 594–604; Todd J. Kristensen, ‘Seasonal Bird Exploitation by Recent Indian and Beothuk Hunter-Gatherers of Newfoundland’, Canadian Journal of Archaeology/Journal Canadien d’Archéologie 35, no. 2 (2011): 292–322. ↩

George Cartwright, A Journal of Transactions and Events, During a Residence of Nearly Sixteen Years on the Coast of Labrador. Containing Many Interesting Particulars, Both of the Country and Its Inhabitants, Not Hitherto Known, vol. 1 (Newark [England]: Allin and Ridge, 1792), 10. ↩

Howley, The Beothucks, 1–27; Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 13–14. ↩

Ibid., 15. ↩

Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 15. ↩

Cadigan, Newfoundland and Labrador, 45–71. Although dated, one of the most detailed accounts of the English colony can be found in Gillian T. Cell, English Enterprise in Newfoundland 1577–1660 (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1969). ↩

Cited in Howley, The Beothucks, 15. ↩

Cartwright, A Journal of Transactions and Events, During a Residence of Nearly Sixteen Years on the Coast of Labrador, 1:6. ↩

Howley, The Beothucks, 34; Cartwright, A Journal of Transactions and Events, During a Residence of Nearly Sixteen Years on the Coast of Labrador, 1:11. ↩

Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 113. For Cartwright’s population estimate see Ibid., 280–1. ↩

Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 118. ↩

Reprinted in Howley, The Beothucks, 58. ↩

Ibid. ↩

Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 127. ↩

Reprinted in Howley, The Beothucks, 70. ↩

Ibid., 77. ↩

Buchan’s writings were not published, but extracts were reprinted in Ibid., 72–90. ↩

Ibid., 89. ↩

Ibid., 91–108. The daughter is mentioned in Ibid., 174. A brief census is provided in Ibid., 226. ↩

Howley, The Beothucks, 123. ↩

Ibid., 95–6, 121–6, f. 241; Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 173–80. ↩

Howley, The Beothucks, 172. ↩

Bishop John Inglis, ‘Shanawdithit, the Last of the Bœothicks’, Monthly Record of Church Missions in Connection with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1856, Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals. ↩

Howley, The Beothucks, 181. ↩

Peyton’s own testimony was recorded by J. P. Howley, and published in Ibid., 91–6. ↩

Ibid., 184, 198. ↩

Ibid., 186. ↩

Cormack’s papers appear to have been lost and were mainly unpublished. Some substantial extracts were published in Ibid., 130–68. W. E. (William Epps) Cormack, ‘Account of a Journey across the Island of Newfoundland, by W. E. Cormack, Esq. in a Letter Addressed to the Right Hon. Earl Bathurst, Secretary of State for the Colonies &c. &c.,—with a Map of Mr. Cormack’s Journey across the Island of Newfoundland’, Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 10 (1824): 156–62; W. E. (William Epps) Cormack, ‘Civilization of the Aborigines of Newfoundland’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 4 (1827): 205–6; W. E. (William Epps) Cormack, ‘Report of Mr. W. E. Cormack’s Journey in Search of the Red Indians in Newfoundland. Read Before the Boeothick Institution at St John’s, Newfoundland. Communicated by Mr. Cormack’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 20 (1829): 318–29; [Cormack, William], ‘Died, at St. John’s, Newfoundland’, The Times (14 September 1829). ↩

For Cormack’s only published notes on Shanawdithit’s testimony consult Howley, The Beothucks, 225–30. For the drawings consult Fiona Polack, ‘Reading Shanawdithit’s Drawings: Transcultural Texts in the North American Colonial World’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 14, no. 3 (2013); Nicholas Chare, ‘Shanawdithit’s Drawings’, in History and Art History: Looking Past Disciplines, ed. Nicholas Chare and Mitchell B. Frank, 1st ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2020). ↩

Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 128. ↩

Howley, The Beothucks, 231. ↩

[Cormack, William], ‘Died, at St. John’s, Newfoundland’. ↩

Marshall, A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk, 219–21. ↩

[McGregor, James], ‘Shaa-Naan-Dithit, or the Last of the Boëothics’, Fraser’s Magazine 13 (1836): 316. ↩

T. G. B. Lloyd, ‘On the “Beothucs”, a Tribe of Red Indians, Supposed to Be Extinct, Which Formerly Inhabited Newfoundland’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 4 (1875): 36; Inglis, ‘Shanawdithit, the Last of the Bœothicks’. ↩

Christopher Aylward, ‘Historical Narrative Perspective in Howley and Speck’, in Tracing Ochre, ed. Fiona Polack, Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 220–44, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctv2fjwqbf.16 ↩

Franz Boas, ‘Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification’, Science 9, no. 228 (1887): 589; Franz Boas, ‘The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart’, Science 9 (1887): 485–6. ↩

A. Irving Hallowell, ‘Frank Gouldsmith Speck, 1881–1950’, American Anthropologist 53, no. 1 (3 January 1951): 67–87; Horace P. Beck, ‘Frank G. Speck, 1881–1950’, Journal of American Folklore 64, no. 254 (1951): 415–18. ↩

Frank Gouldsmith Speck, Beothuk and Micmac (New York, NY: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1922), 55–70, 56. ↩

Ibid., 58. ↩

The Beothuk Story (Zamura Films, 2021), https://www.thebeothukstory.com ↩

Tristan Hopper, ‘Extinction of Newfoundland’s “Lost People” Is a Myth, First Nations Chief Says’, National Post (18 April 2013), https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/local-post ↩

Ned Blackhawk’s monumental The Rediscovery of America places Native peoples at the heart of five centuries of American history to show: ‘Inhabited by approximately 75 million Native peoples in 1492, the Americas were not so much discovered by Spanish colonialists as created by the generations of Spanish-Indian relations that followed.’ Blackhawk’s book is a powerful challenge to centuries of historical writing dependent on myths of extinction, and the systemic erasure of Native agency and power. Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2023). ↩

George Busk, ‘Description of Two Beothuc Skulls’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 5 (1876): 230–3; [Flower, William Henry], ‘Obituary Notice of the Late Professor Busk’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 16 (1887): 403–8. ↩

S. M. Black, I. C. L. Marshall, and A. C. Kitchener, ‘The Skulls of Chief Nonosabasut and His Wife Demasduit – Beothuk of Newfoundland’, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 19, no. 6 (November 2009): 659–77; John Harries, ‘Of Bleeding Skulls and the Postcolonial Uncanny: Bones and the Presence of Nonosabasut and Demasduit’, Journal of Material Culture 15, no. 4 (December 2010): 403–21. ↩

Alice L. Conklin, In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013); Samuel J. Redman, Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). ↩

Kuch et al., ‘A Preliminary Analysis of the DNA and Diet of the Extinct Beothuk’; Black, Marshall, and Kitchener, ‘The Skulls of Chief Nonosabasut and His Wife Demasduit – Beothuk of Newfoundland’; Ana T. Duggan et al., ‘Genetic Discontinuity between the Maritime Archaic and Beothuk Populations in Newfoundland, Canada’, Current Biology 27, no. 20 (23 October 2017): 3149–3156.e11; Ashley Collier and Steven M. Carr, ‘On the Persistence and Detectability of Ancient Beothuk Mitochondrial DNA Genomes in Living First Nations Peoples’, Mitochondrial DNA Part A 30, no. 1 (2 January 2019): 68–74; Steven M. Carr, ‘Evidence for the Persistence of Ancient Beothuk and Maritime Archaic Mitochondrial DNA Genome Lineages Among Modern Native American Peoples’, Genome 63, no. 7 (July 2020): 349–55. ↩

Kuch et al., ‘A Preliminary Analysis of the DNA and Diet of the Extinct Beothuk’. ↩

Duggan et al., ‘Genetic Discontinuity between the Maritime Archaic and Beothuk Populations in Newfoundland, Canada’. ↩

Carr, ‘Evidence for the Persistence of Ancient Beothuk and Maritime Archaic Mitochondrial DNA Genome Lineages Among Modern Native American Peoples’; Ibid.; Holly McKenzie, ‘Miawpukek First Nation to Study Genetic Links with Ancient Beothuk’, CBC News, 18 December 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/dna-testing-beothuk-1.5400540; Anonymous, ‘Thought to Be Extinct, Beothuk DNA Is Present in Living Families, Genetics Researcher Finds’, CBC News, 8 May 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20230313211303/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/beothuk-dna-steven-carr-1.5559913 ↩

All claims about tracing ancestry with reference to specific ethnicities or Nation have been removed from the website. Compare the archived version of their homepage with the current one at Anonymous, ‘Accu-Metrics – DNA Testing’, Accu-Metrics.Com, n.d., https://web.archive.org/web/20131013223353/http://www.accu-metrics.com/dna-tests; Accu-metrics, ‘Genetic’, Accu-Metrics.Com, n.d., https://www.accu-metrics.com/c/genetic. These changes were made after the company’s results were dismissed as bogus: Chris O’Neill-Yates, CBC News, ‘DNA Test Claiming Woman Is Member of Extinct Beothuk First Nation Called Bogus | CBC News’, CBC (27 January 2017), https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/beothuk-dna-ancestry-genetics-1.3953668 ↩

Tara Bradbury, ‘Woman Says DNA Test Proves She Is Beothuk’, Saltwire (26 January 2017), https://web.archive.org/web/20230515113912/https://www.saltwire.com/newfoundland-labrador/news/local/woman-says-dna-test-proves-she-is-beothuk-16608 ↩

CBC News, ‘DNA Test Claiming Woman Is Member of Extinct Beothuk First Nation Called Bogus | CBC News’; Chris O’Neill-Yates, ‘Company’s Test for Beothuk DNA Called Bogus by Geneticists’, CBC News (27 January 2017), https://web.archive.org/web/20221206195417/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/beothuk-dna-ancestry-genetics-1.3953668 ↩

[Reynolds-Boyce, Carol], ‘Beothuk First Nation Tribe of Canada and North America Reservation INC’, n.d., https://www.facebook.com/iambeothuk ↩

Jorge Barrera, ‘Lab in Dog DNA Debacle Used Phoney Facebook Identity to Recruit Sixties Scoop, Motherisk Plaintiffs’, CBC (15 September 2018), https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/lab-in-dog-dna-debacle-used-phoney-facebook-identity-to-recruit-sixties-scoop-motherisk-plaintiffs-1.4815401; Jorge Barrera and Tiffany Foxcroft, ‘Lab’s DNA Results Say This Chihuahua Has 20% Indigenous Ancestry’ (13 June 2018), https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/dna-ancestry-test ↩

Eric Y. Durand et al., ‘Ancestry Composition: A Novel, Efficient Pipeline for Ancestry Deconvolution’ (bioRxiv, 18 October 2014). ↩

Kimberly TallBear, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013). ↩

Scottish Parliament, ‘Official Report: Meeting of the Parliament’ (17 June 2015), 17. ↩

Maureen Googoo, ‘Miawpukek Chief Leads Effort to Have Beothuk Skulls Returned from Scottish Museum’, Ku’ku’kwes News (13 July 2017), https://kukukwes.com/2017/07/13/miawpukek-chief-leads-effort-to-have-beothuk-skulls-returned-from-scottish-museum; Anonymous, ‘No Formal Request for Return of Native American Skulls’, BBC News (2017), sec. Scotland, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-40131082; Anonymous, ‘Museum to Return First Nation Skulls’, BBC News (2019), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-46952065; Anonymous, ‘National Museum of Scotland to Reach Decision on Return of Beothuk Remains to Newfoundland’, The Herald (20 January 2019), https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17371218.will-returned-national-museum-scotland-reach-decision-return-beothuk-remains-newfoundland; Mark Quinn, ‘Beothuk Remains Returned to Newfoundland after 191 Years in Scotland’, CBC News (12 March 2020), https://web.archive.org/web/20221119054010/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/beothuk-remains-returned-nl-1.5494373 ↩

Anonymous, ‘“Bring Them Home and Put Them to Rest”: How Museums Are Working with Indigenous Communities to Repatriate Human Remains’, The Globe and Mail, 9 August 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20221103072226/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/art-and-architecture/article-repatriating-indigenous-remains-key-to-preserve-privacy-of-communities ↩

Gerald Robert Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance (Hanover, ON: Wesleyan University Press, 1994); Gerald Robert Vizenor, Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence, The Abraham Lincoln Lecture Series (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998). ↩

UK Government, ‘Human Tissue Act 2004’ (2004), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/30/contents; David Price, ‘The Human Tissue Act 2004’, Modern Law Review 68, no. 5 (2005): 798–821. ↩

Parks Canada, ‘Shanawdithit National Historic Person’, n.d., https://www.pc.gc.ca/apps/dfhd/page_nhs_eng.aspx?id=1936 ↩

[James Cowles] Prichard, ‘On the Extinction of Human Races’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 28 (1839): 166–70. ↩

Even in the twentieth century, scientific papers and imperial histories were written in the full conviction that Aboriginal Tasmanians were completely exterminated, with many characterizing the loss as an imperial genocide. Claims of total extinction are founded on European notions of kinship that ignore Indigenous accounts of their own descent. For decades, Aboriginal Tasmanians have been forced to prove that they have not died out and have continued attachments to their ancestral lands. Rebe Taylor, ‘Genocide, Extinction and Aboriginal Self-Determination in Tasmanian Historiography: Genocide, Extinction and Aboriginal Self-Determination’, History Compass 11, no. 6 (2013): 405–18; Lawson, The Last Man. ↩

Chapter 3

Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 153–5. ↩

Christian B. Keller, ‘Philanthropy Betrayed: Thomas Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Origins of Federal Indian Removal Policy’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 144 (2000): 43. ↩

Ronald Lindley Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). ↩

Keller, ‘Philanthropy Betrayed’, 53, 49. ↩

James Monroe, cited in Ibid., 50. ↩

Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America, 180, 199. For more on Federal Indian Policy in this period, consult Ibid., 176–247; Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2021); Christina Snyder, Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford, England; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017); Ronald N. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002); United States, ‘An Act to Provide for an Exchange of Lands with the Indians Residing in Any of the States or Territories, and for Their Removal West of the River Mississippi’ (1830). ↩

Andrew Jackson, ‘First Annual Message, December 8, 1829’, in Messages of Gen. Andrew Jackson: With a Short Sketch of His Life, ed. N. H. Concord (J. F. Brown and W. White, 1837), 61. ↩

Francis Paul Prucha, ed., ‘Senator Theodore Freylinghuysen on Indian Removal, April 9, 1830’, in Documents of United States Indian Policy, 3rd ed. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 49–52. ↩

Snyder, Great Crossings; R. Douglas Hurt, The Indian Frontier, 1763–1846 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2002); Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era. ↩

Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and US Indian Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982). ↩

‘Indian Removal Act, 28 May 1830’, reprinted in Francis Paul Prucha, ed., Documents of United States Indian Policy, 52–3. ↩

On the development of reservations consult Joel R. Hyer, We Are Not Savages: Native Americans in Southern California and the Pala Reservation, 1840–1920 (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2001); George Harwood Phillips, Indians and Indian Agents: The Origins of the Reservation System in California, 1849–1852 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); Brad Asher, Beyond the Reservation: Indians, Settlers, and the Law in Washington Territory, 1853–1889 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999); Richard John Perry, Apache Reservation: Indigenous Peoples and the American State (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1993); David J. Wishart, An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994). ↩

Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America; Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016). ↩

Phillips, Indians and Indian Agents, 4. ↩

Donald Chaput, ‘Generals, Indian Agents, Politicians: The Doolittle Survey of 1865’, The Western Historical Quarterly 3 (1972): 269–82; Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America; Blackhawk, Violence over the Land. ↩

United States, Condition of the Indian Tribes: Report of the Joint Special Committee, Appointed Under Joint Resolution of March 3, 1865: With an Appendix (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1867), 428. ↩

Ibid., 472, 440. ↩

Ibid., 7. ↩

Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999). ↩

Dippie, The Vanishing American; Philip Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country: Native Americans and the National Parks (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000). ↩

Samuel Lyman Tyler, A History of Indian Policy (Washington, DC: Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1973), 23. ↩

Bryan Newland, ‘Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report’ (Department of the Interior, United States, May 2022). ↩

Richard Henry Pratt, ‘The Advantages of Mingling Indians with the Whites’, in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, at the Nineteenth Annual Session Held in Denver, Col., June 23–29, 1892 (Boston, MA: Geo. H. Ellis, 1892), 46. ↩

Margaret D. Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 28, https://hdl-handle-net.manchester.idm.oclc.org/2027/heb08861.0001.001 ↩

Newland, ‘Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report’. ↩

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: Reconciliation: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Volume 6 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016); Newland, ‘Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report’. ↩

This account of Catlin’s travels draws upon Benita Eisler, The Red Man’s Bones: George Catlin, Artist and Showman (London: W. W. Norton & Co., 2013); Kate Flint, The Transatlantic Indian, 1776–1930 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); John Hausdoerffer, Catlin’s Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009). ↩

George Catlin, Life Amongst the Indians: A Book for Youth (London: Sampson Low, Son & Co., 1861), 14. ↩

Flint, The Transatlantic Indian, 1776–1930; Qureshi, Peoples on Parade. ↩

Qureshi, Peoples on Parade. ↩

George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, vol. 1 (London: By the Author, 1841), 262. ↩

My discussion draws heavily from Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (New York, NY, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). ↩

Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country, 20. ↩

Ibid., 19. ↩

Ibid., 37. ↩

Robert H. Keller and Michael F. Turek, American Indians and National Parks (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2005); Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness; Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country. ↩

Keller and Turek, American Indians and National Parks, 21. ↩

Ibid., 22. ↩

Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country. ↩

Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 71–82, at 71; Keller and Turek, American Indians and National Parks, 56–64. ↩

William Cronon, ‘The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature’, Environmental History 1 (1996): 7–28. ↩

Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 54–6. ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts; Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness. ↩

Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 55–70. ↩

Ibid., 62–70. ↩

Daniel Brockington, James Igoe et al., ‘Eviction for Conservation: A Global Overview’, Conservation and Society 4 (2006): 424–70. It should be added that the numbers of people evicted in these reports are often omitted; however, where included they ranged from ‘five families … to tens of thousands of people’, p. 437. ↩

Catherine Hall et al., Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); C. Hall, ‘Gendering Property, Racing Capital’, History Workshop Journal 78, no. 1 (1 October 2014): 22–38. ↩

Cited in James Heartfield, The Aborigines’ Protection Society: Humanitarian Imperialism in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa, and the Congo, 1836–1909 (London: Hurst, 2011), 9. ↩

Aborigines’ Protection Society, ‘Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements)’, 1837, ix. ↩

Ibid., 5. The remark drew directly from the writings of Captain Buchan about the Beothuk (consult chapter 2). ↩

Ibid., 7, 10, 11. ↩

Ibid., 5. ↩

Theodor Waitz, Introduction to Anthropology, trans. J. Frederick Collingwood (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1863), 351. ↩

Ibid. For broader accounts of anti-colonial writing in this period consult Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent (London: Verso, 2019). ↩

Jacob W. Gruber, ‘Ethnographic Salvage and the Shaping of Anthropology’, American Anthropologist 72, no. 6 (1970): 1289–99. ↩

Richard Lee, ‘The Extinction of Races’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. 2 (1864): xcv. ↩

T. Bendyshe, ‘On the Extinction of Races’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. 2 (1864): xcix; Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). ↩

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859), 488. ↩

Alfred R. Wallace, ‘The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of Natural Selection’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. 2 (1864): clxiv–clxv, clxviii. ↩

Ibid. ↩

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1871), 160. ↩

Ibid., 238. ↩

Ibid. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Primitive Races within the British Empire: A Problem in Adaptation’, Nature 113, no. 2850 (1924): 846. ↩

Raphaël Lemkin, ‘Tasmania’, Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (2005): 170–96; Ann Curthoys, ‘Raphaël Lemkin’s “Tasmania”: An Introduction’, Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (2005): 162–9; A. Dirk Moses, ‘Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide’, in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 19–41. ↩

Raphaël Lemkin, ‘Genocide – A Modern Crime’, Free World (April 1945). ↩

United Nations, ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ (1948). ↩

Anonymous, ‘CTUIR’s Sams Honored, Thankful after Historic Confirmation for National Park Service Director Position – Confederated Umatilla Journal’, Confederated Umatilla Journal (19 November 2021), https://cuj.ctuir.org/2021/11/4690; Aaron McDade, ‘First Native American National Park Service Director Unanimously Confirmed’, Newsweek (19 November 2021), sec. News, https://www.newsweek.com/senate-unanimously-confirms-first-native-american-leader-national-park-service-1651552 ↩

David Sepkoski characterizes this view as the first ‘extinction imaginary’ of many that have framed extinction within the modern world through a ‘co-construction of scientific and cultural values’. Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking, 6. ↩

Alexander Koch et al., ‘Earth System Impacts of the European Arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492’, Quaternary Science Reviews 207 (March 2019): 13–36; Alexander Koch et al., ‘European Colonisation of the Americas Killed 10% of World Population and Caused Global Cooling’, The Conversation (31 January 2019), http://theconversation.com/european-colonisation-of-the-americas-killed-10-of-world-population-and-caused-global-cooling-110549 ↩

TallBear, Native American DNA. ↩

Ashifa Kassam, ‘Sinixt First Nation Wins Recognition in Canada Decades after “Extinction”’, The Guardian (30 March 2017), sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/30/canada-sinixt-first-nation-extinct-recognition; Sinixt Nation, ‘Not Extinct’, n.d., https://keepingthesinixtway.ca ↩

Chapter 4

Handbill advertising an exhibition of a ‘Human Fossil’, 1840, Geological Society of London, LDGSL/547, image 10-03. The text of the handbill was reproduced almost entirely in newspaper advertisements such as Anonymous, ‘Human Fossil, Alleged to Be Ante-Diluvian’, The Colonist (7 November 1840); Anonymous, ‘EXHIBITION of a HUMAN FOSSIL’, Morning Post (9 June 1840). ↩

William Buckland, note written on a promotional handbill for the exhibition, cited in Francis Buckland, Curiosities of Natural History, 4th ed. (New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1860), 104. ↩

This account of Linnaean taxonomy draws from Lisbet Koerner, ‘Carl Linnaeus in His Time and Place’, in Cultures of Natural History, ed. Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord, and E. C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 145–62; Peter Harrison, ‘Linnaeus as a Second Adam? Taxonomy and the Religious Vocation’, Zygon® 44, no. 4 (2009): 879–93; Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier, ‘Natural History and Information Overload: The Case of Linnaeus’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Data-Driven Research in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 43, no. 1 (2012): 4–15; S. Müller-Wille, ‘Systems and How Linnaeus Looked at Them in Retrospect’, Annals of Science 70, no. 3 (2013): 305–17. ↩

Consult the forthcoming book by Meleisa Ono-George, My Name Is Amelia Newsham: Science, Art and the Making of Race (Viking, forthcoming). Also consult Christina Skott, ‘Linnaeus and the Troglodyte: Early European Encounters with the Malay World and the Natural History of Man’, Indonesia and the Malay World 42, no. 123 (4 May 2014): 141–69; Christina Skott, ‘Human Taxonomies: Carl Linnaeus, Swedish Travel in Asia and the Classification of Man’, Itinerario 43, no. 2 (2019): 218–42. ↩

Skott, ‘Linnaeus and the Troglodyte’; Skott, ‘Human Taxonomies’; David Notton and Chris Stringer, ‘Who Is the Type of Homo Sapiens?’, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, accessed 3 April 2024, http://iczn.org/content/who-type-homo-sapiens; Gunnar Broberg, ‘Homo Sapiens’, in The Man Who Organized Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023), 294–300. On earlier histories of being human consult Surekha Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). ↩

David N. Livingstone, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (place Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). ↩

Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982); Hannah Franziska Augstein, James Cowles Prichard’s Anthropology: Remaking the Science of Man in the Early Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam, GA: Rodopi, 1999); Chris Manias, Race, Science, and the Nation: Reconstructing the Ancient Past in Britain, France and Germany (London: Routledge, 2013); Efram Sera-Shriar, The Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871 (Pittsburgh, PA: Pickering & Chatto, 2013). ↩

Respectively, Japheth in Genesis 10:2–5, Ham in Genesis 10:6–20 and Shem in Genesis 10:21–30. For an excellent guide to the importance of Biblical ideas of race consult Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). ↩

Peter Salway, A History of Roman Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Richard Hingley, Conquering the Ocean: The Roman Invasion of Britain (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022). ↩

The literature on human antiquity in this period is growing. The best overviews remain Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam; A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Men Among the Mammoths: Victorian Science and the Discovery of Human Prehistory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Manias, Race, Science, and the Nation; Marianne Sommer, Bones and Ochre: The Curious Afterlife of the Red Lady of Paviland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). ↩

The naturalist Michele Mercati first suggested they were stone tools in the sixteenth century, but his ideas remained unpublished until discovered in his manuscripts after his death in 1593. Matthew R. Goodrum, ‘The Meaning of Ceraunia: Archaeology, Natural History and the Interpretation of Prehistoric Stone Artefacts in the Eighteenth Century’, The British Journal for the History of Science 35 (2002): 255–69; Matthew R. Goodrum, ‘Questioning Thunderstones and Arrowheads: The Problem of Recognizing and Interpreting Stone Artifacts in the Seventeenth Century’, Early Science and Medicine 13 (2008): 482–508; Matthew R. Goodrum, ‘Recovering the Vestiges of Primeval Europe: Archaeology and the Significance of Stone Implements, 1750–1800’, Journal of the History of Ideas 72 (2011): 51–74. ↩

Marianne Sommer, ‘“An Amusing Account of a Cave in Wales”: William Buckland (1784–1856) and the Red Lady of Paviland’, The British Journal for the History of Science 37, no. 1 (2004): 53–74; Sommer, Bones and Ochre. ↩

Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam, 228–32. ↩

William Benjamin Carpenter, ‘On the Fossil Human Jawbone Recently Discovered in the Gravel Near Abbeville’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 12 (1863): 524–9; Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam, 407–22; Van Riper, Men Among the Mammoths, 62–73. ↩

Peter Rowley-Conwy, From Genesis to Prehistory: The Archaeological Three Age System and its Contested Reception in Denmark, Britain, and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). ↩

Adopted relatively quickly in Scandinavia, the Three Age system was also promoted by J. J. A. Worsaae as he travelled between London, Edinburgh and Dublin from 1846 to 1847. Wilson probably learned of the term from his friend Peter Andreas Munch. On the development of the Three Age system consult Ibid.; Peter Rowley-Conwy, ‘The Concept of Prehistory and the Invention of the Terms “Prehistoric” and “Prehistorian”: The Scandinavian Origin, 1833–1850’, European Journal of Archaeology 9, no. 1 (2006): 103–30. On Daniel Wilson’s importance also consult Alice B. Kehoe, ‘The Invention of Prehistory’, Current Anthropology 32 (1991): 467–76. ↩

The discovery of the Neanderthal bones is well rehearsed in the literature. For the best summary of the circumstances and contested meanings of the bones refer to Paige Madison, ‘The Most Brutal of Human Skulls: Measuring and Knowing the First Neanderthal’, The British Journal for the History of Science 49, no. 03 (2016): 411–32; Paige Madison, ‘Characterized by Darkness: Reconsidering the Origins of the Brutish Neanderthal’, Journal of the History of Biology, 2020. ↩

Charles Lyell, ‘Introductory Address by the President, Sir C. Lyell. On the Occurrence of Works of Human Art in Post-Pliocene Deposits’, Report of the Twenty-Ninth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Aberdeen in September 1859, 1860, 93–5; Van Riper, Men Among the Mammoths. ↩

Lyell, ‘Introductory Address’, 93. ↩

Charles Darwin to Joseph Dalton Hooker, 11 January 1844, MS DAR 114: 3, Darwin Correspondence Project, University Library, Cambridge. ↩

Adrian J. Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London, Science and its Conceptual Foundations (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989). ↩

The most authoritative and magisterial account of the publication and reception of this bestseller remains James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003). ↩

Peter C. Kjærgaard, ‘“Hurrah for the Missing Link!”: A History of Apes, Ancestors and a Crucial Piece of Evidence’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 65 (2011): 83–98. ↩

S. Schaaffhausen and George Busk, ‘On the Crania of the Most Ancient Races of Man. With Remarks, and Original Figures, Taken from a Cast of the Neanderthal Cranium’, Natural History Review 1 (1861): 155–76. ↩

Ibid., 160. ↩

Ibid., 162. ↩

Ibid., 163, 165. ↩

Ibid., 172. ↩

Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981). ↩

David Bindman, Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). On racialization more broadly during the period, consult Roxann Wheeler, The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). ↩

Formally the skull types are: long and narrow, or dolichocephalic; oval, or mesaticephalic; and brachycephalic or short and broad. Anders Retzius and William Daniel Moore, ‘A Glance at the Present State of Ethnology, with Reference to the Form of the Skull’, The British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review 26, no. 51 (1860): 215–30; Eva Åhrén, ‘Figuring Things Out: Visualizations in the Work of Swedish Anatomists Anders and Gustaf Retzius, 1829–1921’, Nuncius 32, no. 1 (2017): 166–211; Rowley-Conwy, From Genesis to Prehistory: The Archaeological Three Age System and its Contested Reception in Denmark, Britain, and Ireland, 63, 120. The best-known exploration of the legacies of the cephalic index remains Gould, The Mismeasure of Man. For more recent explorations of craniometry and the collection of skulls consult Ann Fabian, The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010). ↩

Thomas Henry Huxley, Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863), 129. ↩

Ibid., 155–6. ↩

Despite King’s casual aside, the name stands according to scientific conventions of priority. William King, ‘The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal’, Quarterly Journal of Science 1 (1864): 96. ↩

Ibid., 93, 96. Also consult William King, ‘The Neanderthal Skull’, Anthropological Review 1 (1863): 393–4. On imperial encounters with the Andaman Islands consult C. Wintle, ‘Model Subjects: Representations of the Andaman Islands at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1886’, History Workshop Journal 67, no. 1 (1 March 2009): 194–207; Clare Anderson, Madhumita Mazumdar, and Vishvajit Pandya, New Histories of the Andaman Islands: Landscape, Place and Identity in the Bay of Bengal, 1790–2012 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). ↩

King, ‘The Reputed Fossil Man of the Neanderthal’, 96. Also consult Madison, ‘Characterized by Darkness’. ↩

This history of the Gibraltar skull draws from Alex Menez, ‘The Gibraltar Skull: Early History, 1848–1868’, Archives of Natural History 45 (2018): 92–110; Alex Menez, ‘Custodian of the Gibraltar Skull: The History of the Gibraltar Scientific Society’, Earth Sciences History 37, no. 1 (2018): 34–62. ↩

George Busk, ‘Pithecoid Priscan Man from Gibraltar’, The Reader. A Review of Literature, Science, and Art 4 (1864): 110. In 1868 the Gibraltar skull was presented to the Royal College of Surgeons and ultimately transferred to the Natural History Museum where it remains. ↩

In 1936, Charles Fraipoint freshly examined the skulls from Engis cave. Fraipoint’s research led to Schmerling being recognized as the first person to discover Neanderthal remains in 1829. Anonymous, ‘Research Items: Fossil Men of Engis’, Nature 138, no. 3491 (1936): 553. ↩

The problem of a singular specimen was recognized by later writers such as William Johnson Sollas, ‘On the Cranial and Facial Characters of the Neandertal Race’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character 199 (1908): 281. ↩

The best analysis of this is Madison, ‘The Most Brutal of Human Skulls’. ↩

John Lubbock, ‘The Early Condition of Man’, Anthropological Review (1868), 337. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Notes on the Antiquity of Man’, Anthropological Review 1 (1863): 61. ↩

Wheeler, The Complexion of Race. ↩

Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science; Seymour Drescher, ‘The Ending of the Slave Trade and the Evolution of European Scientific Racism’, Social Science History 14, no. 3 (1990): 415. ↩

Van Riper, Men Among the Mammoths; Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam. ↩

Lubbock collected the wasp from the Spanish Pyrenees and donated the insect to the Natural History Museum in London in 1873, where she remains. The wasp’s passing was commemorated in Nature, and a local newspaper: Anonymous, ‘Notes’, Nature 7, no. 177 (1873): 391; Anonymous, ‘Sir John Lubbock’s Pet Wasp’, Morpeth Herald, 8 October 1898. ↩

Charles Lyell, The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1863); John Lubbock, Pre-Historic Times: As Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (London: Williams and Norgate, 1865). On Lubbock’s reception consult Clive Gamble and Theodora Moutsiou, ‘The Time Revolution of 1859 and the Stratification of the Primeval Mind’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 65 (2011): 43–63. ↩

Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, vol. 1, 3. ↩

Francis Palgrave, The History of Normandy and of England, vol. 1 (London: John W. Parker & Sons, 1851–64), 469–70. ↩

Adelene Buckland and Sadiah Qureshi, eds, Time Travelers: Victorian Encounters with Time and History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020). ↩

Lubbock, Pre-Historic Times, 336. ↩

Ibid., 335–91, 392–439, 440–72. ↩

Lubbock, ‘The Early Condition of Man’, 333. ↩

Chris Manias, ‘The Problematic Construction of “Palaeolithic Man”: The Old Stone Age and the Difficulties of the Comparative Method, 1859–1914’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2015). ↩

Lubbock, Pre-Historic Times; William Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880); Manias, ‘The Problematic Construction of “Palaeolithic Man”’. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Notes on the Antiquity of Man’, 106. ↩

Lubbock, Pre-Historic Times, 99. ↩

Anonymous, ‘The French Association at Havre’, Nature 16, no. 410 (1877): 384. ↩

Dawkins, Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period, 243. ↩

Ibid. Accounts of conquest and extermination are striking, but we must remember that displacement, intermingling or co-existence were all recognized responses to prehistoric interethnic encounters. Chris Manias, ‘“Our Iberian Forefathers”: The Deep Past and Racial Stratification of British Civilization, 1850–1914’, Journal of British Studies 51 (2012): 910–35; Simon John Cook, ‘The Making of the English: English History, British Identity, Aryan Villages, 1870–1914’, Journal of the History of Ideas 75, no. 4 (2014): 629–49. ↩

On the development of the typological system and foundation of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford consult B. A. L. Cranstone, ‘The Pitt Rivers Museum: Past, Present and Future’, Newsletter (Museum Ethnographers Group) (1984), 1–8; William Chapman, ‘The Organizational Context in the History of Archaeology: Pitt Rivers and Other British Archaeologists in the 1860s’, The Antiquaries Journal 69, no. 01 (March 1989): 23–42; Alison Petch, ‘Collecting Immortality: The Field Collectors Who Contributed to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford’, Journal of Museum Ethnography 16 (2003): 127–39; Alison Petch, ‘A Typology of Benefactors: The Relationships of Pitt Rivers and Tylor to the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford’, Forum for Anthropology and Culture (2006), http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/eng004/eng4_petch.pdf; A. Petch, ‘Chance and Certitude: Pitt Rivers and His First Collection’, Journal of the History of Collections 18, no. 2 (29 June 2006): 257–66; F. Larson, A. Petch, and D. Zeitlyn, ‘Social Networks and the Creation of the Pitt Rivers Museum’, Journal of Material Culture 12, no. 3 (1 November 2007): 211–39; F. Larson, ‘Anthropological Landscaping: General Pitt Rivers, the Ashmolean, the University Museum and the Shaping of an Oxford Discipline’, Journal of the History of Collections 20, no. 1 (1 May 2008): 85–100. ↩

A. H. Lane Fox, ‘On the Principles of Classification Adopted in the Arrangement of his Anthropological Collection, Now Exhibited in the Bethnal Green Museum’, Journal of Anthropological Institute 4 (1874): 307. ↩

The Old Man was dug up by Abbés F. and J. Bouyssonie. Anonymous, ‘Fossil Man’, Nature 91 (1913): 91. ↩

Marcellin Boule, translated by and cited in William L. Straus and A. J. E. Cave, ‘Pathology and the Posture of Neanderthal Man’, The Quarterly Review of Biology 32, no. 4 (1957): 358. Also consult Anonymous, ‘Fossil Man’; Michael Hammond, ‘The Expulsion of the Neanderthals from Human Ancestry: Marcellin Boule and the Social Context of Scientific Research’, Social Studies of Science 12, no. 1 (1982): 1–36; Madison, ‘The Most Brutal of Human Skulls’. ↩

By the 1920s, Aleš Hrdlička was one of the few people still considering Neanderthals to be a direct ancestor and arguing that humans had undergone a Neanderthal phase. Aleš Hrdlička, ‘The Neanderthal Phase of Man’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 57 (1927): 249–74. ↩

The boy, named Gibraltar 2, is now considered to have been about three years old when he died. The girl is known as La Quina 18. Anonymous, ‘Woman Finds New Cave Man Skull at Gibraltar’, The Science News-Letter 9 (1926): 1; Anonymous, ‘The Recently Discovered Gibraltar Skull’, Nature 118, no. 2965 (1926): 320; Anonymous, ‘The Gibraltar Skull’, Nature 120, no. 3028 (1927): 710; Dorothy A. E. Garrod, L. H. Dudley Buxton, and G. Elliot Smith, ‘Excavation of a Mousterian Rock-Shelter at Devil’s Tower, Gibraltar’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1928): 33–113; M. C. Dean, C. B. Stringer, and T. G. Bromage, ‘Age at Death of the Neanderthal Child from Devil’s Tower Gibraltar and the Implications for Studies of General Growth and Development in Neanderthals’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 70 (n.d.): 301–9. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Woman Finds New Cave Man Skull at Gibraltar’. Compare with the mentions of ‘Miss Garrod’ in Anonymous, ‘The Recently Discovered Gibraltar Skull’, Science 64, no. 1660 (1926): 397–8. ↩

For an introductory account of significant fossil finds, consult Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). On the broader historiography, consult Matthew R. Goodrum, ‘The History of Human Origins Research and its Place in the History of Science: Research Problems and Historiography’, History of Science 47, no. 3 (2009): 337–57. ↩

Straus and Cave, ‘Pathology and the Posture of Neanderthal Man’. ↩

Ibid., 359. ↩

Scientific views of human prehistory have shifted dramatically even since the publication of Clive Finlayson, The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). For the best overviews of modern scientific views consult João Zilhão, ‘The Neanderthals: Evolution, Palaeoecology, and Extinction’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers, ed. Vicki Cummings, Peter Jordan, and Marek Zvelebil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 192–214; Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art (London: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020); Thomas Higham, The World Before Us: How Science Is Revealing a New Story of Our Human Origins (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021). ↩

In 2021 the discovery of nine Neanderthal skeletons among hundreds of bones of extinct beasts in Guattari Cave near Rome sparked excitement. The Italian Ministry released a statement suggesting that many of the bones showed signs of gnawing, probably by the hyenas also found onsite. Lorenzo Tondo, ‘Remains of Nine Neanderthals Found in Cave South of Rome’, Guardian, 8 May 2021, sec. Science, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/08/remains-of-nine-neanderthals-found-in-cave-south-of-rome ↩

J. Zilhão et al., ‘Last Interglacial Iberian Neandertals as Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers’, Science 367, no. 6485 (2020): eaaz7943; Manuel Will, ‘Neanderthal Surf and Turf’, Science 367 (2020): 1422–3. ↩

D. L. Hoffmann et al., ‘U-Th Dating of Carbonate Crusts Reveals Neandertal Origin of Iberian Cave Art’, Science 359, no. 6378 (2018): 912–15. For an accessible summary of the latest scientific research on Neanderthal culture consult Wragg Sykes, Kindred. ↩

Theodosius Dobzhansky, ‘On Species and Races of Living and Fossil Man’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 2, no. 3 (1944): 262–3. ↩

Ibid., 258. ↩

C. Duarte et al., ‘The Early Upper Paleolithic Human Skeleton from the Abrigo Do Lagar Velho (Portugal) and Modern Human Emergence in Iberia’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96 (1999): 7604–9; I. Tattersall and J. H. Schwartz, ‘Hominids and Hybrids: The Place of Neanderthals in Human Evolution’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96 (1999): 7117–19. ↩

Duarte et al., ‘The Early Upper Paleolithic Human Skeleton from the Abrigo Do Lagar Velho (Portugal) and Modern Human Emergence in Iberia’; Tattersall and Schwartz, ‘Hominids and Hybrids’; Clive Finlayson et al., ‘Late Survival of Neanderthals at the Southernmost Extreme of Europe’, Nature 443 (2006): 850–3. ↩

Richard E. Green et al., ‘A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome’, Science 328, no. 5979 (2010): 710–22. ↩

Ibid., 8. ↩

The original research concluded that few Africans carried Neanderthal DNA, but subsequent studies suggested it is far more common than originally imagined. Michael Price, ‘Africans, Too, Carry Neanderthal Genetic Legacy’, Science 367 (2020): 497. ↩

Tom Higham et al., ‘The Timing and Spatiotemporal Patterning of Neanderthal Disappearance’, Nature 512 (2014): 306–9; Mateja Hajdinjak et al., ‘Initial Upper Palaeolithic Humans in Europe Had Recent Neanderthal Ancestry’, Nature 592 (2021): 253–7. ↩

ScottH, ‘Find Your Inner Neanderthal’, 23andMe Blog, 15 December 2011, https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/find-your-inner-neanderthal; 23andMe, ‘Celebrate your Ancient DNA with a New Neanderthal Report’, 23andMe Blog (23 April 2020), https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/new-neanderthal-report ↩

Tattersall and Schwartz, ‘Hominids and Hybrids’. ↩

I have previously argued that questions of antiquity, evolution, and descent need to be ranked together as histories of the human sciences in the nineteenth century. Sadiah Qureshi, ‘Looking to Our Ancestors’, in Time Travelers: Victorian Encounters with Time and History, ed. Adelene Buckland and Sadiah Qureshi (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 3–23. ↩

Compare the nineteenth-century use of ethnographic observations with those in Zilhão, ‘The Neanderthals: Evolution, Palaeoecology, and Extinction’, 300. Likewise, ethnographic comparisons are consistently made in Wragg Sykes, Kindred. This legacy is also explored in Pratik Chakrabarti, Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020). ↩

Alison Bashford, Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). ↩

Chapter 5

Daisy Bates, letter to John Murray, 2 February 1939, Daisy Bates Papers, John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland, Acc. 13451, henceforth abbreviated to NLS13451. ↩

Bob Reece, Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert (Canberra, ACT: National library of Australia, 2007), 121. ↩

Daisy Bates, letter to John Murray, 17 August 1938, NLS13451. ↩

For the most important discussion of this theme in Australia, consult Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Carlton South, VI: Melbourne University Press, 1998). ↩

Darcy Niland, ‘Stone Age Woman’, Braidwood Review and District Advocate (30 January 1951). Bates was called the ‘white queen of the never never’ in the press, and the ‘great white queen of the never never’ in Salter’s biography. Anonymous, ‘Women’s World’, Avon Gazette and York Times (15 June 1923); Elizabeth Salter, The Great White Queen of the Never Never (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972). ↩

Chris Clarkson et al., ‘Human Occupation of Northern Australia by 65,000 Years Ago’, Nature 547, no. 7663 (2017): 306–10; Shaun Adams et al., ‘Early Human Occupation of Australia’s Eastern Seaboard’, Scientific Reports 14, no. 1 (2024): 2579. ↩

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, ‘Languages Alive’, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (24 March 2023), https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/languages-alive; ‘AustLang’, Austlang, n.d., c 2019, https://collection.aiatsis.gov.au/austlang/search ↩

Marshall Clark and Sally K. May, Macassan History and Heritage: Journeys, Encounters and Influences (ANU Press, 2013); Lyndon Ormond-Parker, ‘Aboriginal Trade with Macassan Seafarers’, Agora 55, no. 3 (2020): 3–7. ↩

Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre, eds, The Cambridge History of Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). ↩

Tim Rowse, ‘Notes on the History of Aboriginal Population of Australia’, in Genocide and Settler Society (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004); Alan N. Williams et al., ‘The First Australians Grew to a Population of Millions, Much More than Previous Estimates’, The Conversation (29 April 2021), http://theconversation.com/the-first-australians-grew-to-a-population-of-millions-much-more-than-previous-estimates-142371 ↩

Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Historical Population, 2016’, 2016, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/historical-population/latest-release. All further population statistics for the settler population are taken from this source. ↩

Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1996); Bashford and Macintyre, eds, The Cambridge History of Australia. ↩

Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, 2nd ed. (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1996); Henry Reynolds, A History of Tasmania (Cambridge [England] and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Lyndall Ryan, ‘Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788–1930’, Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788–1930 (2022, 2017), https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres; Lawson, The Last Man; Taylor, ‘Genocide, Extinction and Aboriginal Self-Determination in Tasmanian Historiography’; Benjamin Madley, ‘From Terror to Genocide: Britain’s Tasmanian Penal Colony and Australia’s History Wars’, Journal of British Studies 47, no. 1 (2008): 77–106; McGregor, Imagined Destinies. ↩

The map and data are available on the Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788–1930 website at https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres. The first release of the data was in 2017, and it was updated until October 2024. ↩

Aborigines Protection Society, ‘Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements)’, 10. ↩

Ann Curthoys and Jessie Mitchell, ‘The Advent of Self-Government, 1840s–90’, in The Cambridge History of Australia, ed. Bashford and Macintyre, 149–69; Zoë Laidlaw, ‘“Aunt Anna’s Report”: The Buxton Women and the Aborigines Select Committee, 1835–37’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 32, no. 2 (2004): 1–28; Heartfield, The Aborigines’ Protection Society; A. Lester, ‘Settler Colonialism, George Grey and the Politics of Ethnography’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34, no. 3 (1 June 2016): 492–507; Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, ‘Trajectories of Protection: Protectorates of Aborigines in Early 19th Century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand’, New Zealand Geographer 64, no. 3 (2008): 205–20; Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire, Critical Perspectives on Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). ↩

Unless otherwise stated, all biographical details are from Reece, Daisy Bates. ↩

On Stead’s campaign consult Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 81–134. ↩

This summary of her travels is condensed from Isobel White, ‘Daisy Bates: Legend and Reality’, in First in Their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology, ed. Julie Marcus (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993), 46–65; Reece, Daisy Bates. ↩

Daisy Bates, letter to John Murray, 25 July 1938, NLS13451. On go-betweens consult Simon Schaffer, The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770–1820 (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2009). ↩

Reece, Daisy Bates, 45. ↩

Bates, letter to John Murray, 25 August 1938, NLS13451. ↩

J. P. Thomson, letter to Bates, 30 April 1905, Bates Papers, MS365, NLA, F97/546. ↩

Daisy M. Bates, The Native Tribes of Western Australia, ed. Isobel White (Canberra, ACT: National Library of Australia, 1985). ↩

Bates, letter to John Murray, 4 February 1944, NLS13451. ↩

Walter Malcolmson, ‘The People of Australia and The Aborigines’, The Times (8 April 1904). ↩

H. B. Lefroy, ‘The People of Australia and The Aborigines’, The Times (12 April 1904). ↩

A full list of articles is not possible, but some of the most useful are H. R. Fox Bourne, ‘Aborigines of Western Australia’, The Times (9 May 1904); Henry Copeland, ‘The People of Australia and the Aborigines’, The Times (28 March 1904); Ibid. (21 March 1904); Harold Finch-Hatton and J. F. Hogan, ‘The People of Australia and the Aborigines’, The Times (23 March 1904); J. F. Hogan, ‘The People of Australia and the Aborigines’, The Times (31 March 1904); Finch-Hatton and Hogan, ‘The People of Australia and the Aborigines’; Lefroy, ‘The People of Australia and The Aborigines’; Walter Malcolmson, ‘The Aborigines In Western Australia’, The Times (8 March 1905); Ibid. ↩

Daisy M. Bates, ‘The People of Australia and The Aborigines’, The Times (24 May 1904). ↩

Western Australia, Parliament, Royal Commission on the Condition of the Natives Report (Perth, WA: W. M. Alfred Watson, Government Printer, 1905). ↩

Bates, letter to John Murray, 4 February 1944, NLS13451. ↩

Bates, letter to John Mathew, 3 February 1910, MS3197, NLA. ↩

Bates, The Native Tribes of Western Australia. ↩

Adam Kuper, Anthropology & Anthropologists: The Modern British School, 3rd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 42. ↩

Daisy Bates, letter to John Mathew, MS3197, NLA. The original manuscript is in the Bates Papers, MS365, NLA, and has been cut into smaller sections that have been reassembled. BAAS annual report. ↩

Elizabeth Salter, correspondence, Man, n.s., 10 (1975): 473–4. ↩

Rodney Needham, letter to Elizabeth Salter, 16 May 1975, MS6481, Box 4, 2/10, NLA, and Rodney Needham, letter to Elizabeth Salter, 26 September 1975, Box 4, 2/10, NLA. Also consult Isobel White, ‘Mrs Bates and Mr Brown: An Examination of Rodney Needham’s Allegations’, Oceania 51, no. 3 (1981): 193–210; Isobel White, ‘Isobel White Replies to Professor Needham’, Oceania 53 (1982): 139–40. ↩

Norman B. Tindale, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names (Canberra, ACT: Australian National University Press, 1974), xii. Rodney Needham, letter to Elizabeth Salter, 26 September 1975, Box 4, 2/10, NLA, referred to Tindale’s note. ↩

White, ‘Daisy Bates: Legend and Reality’, 60–1. ↩

John Mathew, letter to Bates, 23 April 1902, Bates Papers, MS365, NLA, F97/304–5. Bates and Mathew exchanged books, photographs of Aboriginal peoples, and theories about linguistic development, and how closely related Aboriginal peoples were to other Indigenous groups such as the Papuans. Also consult Bob Reece, ‘“You Would Have Loved Her for Her Lore”: The Letters of Daisy Bates’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, no. 1 (2007): 51–70. ↩

Kenneth Young, letter to Bates, 1 August 1905, Bates Papers, MS365, NLA, F97/621–3. ↩

R. H. Mathew, letter to Bates, 29 August 1905, Bates Papers, MS365, F97/355–6. See also R. H. Mathew, letter to Bates, 16 July 1905, F 97/353, and 25 September 1905, F97/354. ↩

Bates, letter to Murray, 22 July 1944, NLS13451, 165, and Bates, letter to Mr Bartholomew, 2 October 1945, NLS13451, 173. ↩

Daisy Bates, letter to Mrs Hosking, 21 December 1944, Salter Papers, MS6481 NLA, box 4-2 (7)-99. ↩

‘As to the half-castes, however early they may be taken and trained, with very few exceptions the only good half-caste is a dead one.’ From Daisy M. Bates, ‘Aboriginal Reserves and Women Patrols’, Sunday Times (Perth, WA), 2 October 1921, 18. ↩

Bates, letter to John Murray, undated, NLS13451. ↩

Reece, Daisy Bates, 138–41. ↩

Throughout the article and footnotes, ‘John Murray’ refers to the publisher while ‘Murray’ refers to Bates’s editor, John G. Murray. The most detailed published analysis of the book’s publication is Bob Reece’s ‘Introduction’ to Daisy Bates, My Natives and I: Incorporating the Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent among the Natives of Australia, ed. P. J. Bridge (Carlisle, WA: Hesperian Press, 2004), xii–xxxiii. ↩

[Andrew Lang], report on the MS of My Natives and I, NLS13451. ↩

E. M. L., referee’s report on the MS of My Natives and I, 2 February 1938, NLS13451. ↩

Lang, report on MS, NLS13451. ↩

Daisy Bates, letter to John Murray, 17 August 1938, NLS13451. To Ernestine Hill’s disappointment, she was not credited either as co-author or even editor despite her extensive involvement. Reece, Daisy Bates. ↩

Bates, letter to Murray, 1 September 1938, NLS13451, 22 and 24 October 1938, NLS13451. ↩

Ibid., 15 October 1938, NLS13451. ↩

Ibid., 17 August 1938, NLS13451. ↩

Daisy Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime spent among the Natives of Australia (London: John Murray, 1938), p. 207. ↩

In the language of the time, these were the ‘Bibbulmun’. Bates, My Natives and I, ed. Bridge, 64–5, 84–5, 95–6; Daisy M. Bates, ‘A Few Notes on Some South-Western Australian Dialects’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 44 (1914): 65–82. ↩

Bates, letter to John Murray, 16 January 1939, NLS13451. ↩

Ibid. ↩

‘These are such delicate times for us and our Empire. I can only read Headlines in The Advertiser and as I lie awake at night I think of the awful havoc that would issue if by any dreadful circumstance Russia, Germany and Italy would lose their Dictators.’ Bates, letter to Murray, 22 September 1938, NLS13451. ↩

Bates, letter to Murray, 17 July 1938, NLS13451. ↩

Bates, letter to [Allan], 11 November 1940, Adelaide, Salter MS6481 NLA, Box 3-2(4)-47. Reece, Daisy Bates. ↩

In the present day, Trukanini’s image is used within the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery as part of a much broader exhibition on the continued existence of Aboriginal Tasmanians. ↩

Bates Papers, MS365, F94/28, F94/115 and F94/116. ↩

Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines, 49, 115. ↩

F. Wood Jones, ‘The Aborigines: Fate of the Passing People’, The Times (26 January 1938), viii. ↩

Bain Atwood, Rights for Aborigines (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2003), 22–3. ↩

Aboriginal reservations have existed since the nineteenth century when settlers often recognized Aboriginal peoples as having some prior claim to the land, but this recognition faded in the twentieth century. Henry Reynolds, The Law of the Land, 2nd ed. (Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1992); Goodall, Invasion to Embassy. ↩

Donald Fergusson Thomson, Interim General Report of Preliminary Expedition to Arnhem Land, Northern Territory of Australia, 1935–36 (Canberra, ACT: Department of the Interior, 1936), 42. ↩

Ibid., 45; Donald Fergusson Thomson, Report on Expedition to Arnhem Land, 1936–37 (Canberra, ACT: Department of the Interior, 1939). ↩

Atwood, Rights for Aborigines; Bain Atwood and Andrew Markus, Thinking Black: William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines’ League (Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2004). ↩

Australia and Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997); Tony Barta, ‘Sorry, and Not Sorry, in Australia: How the Apology to the Stolen Generations Buried a History of Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research 10 (2008): 201–14. ↩

Such policies and the subsequent forcible child removals are now formally recognized as genocide. Consult Australia and Meredith Wilkie, eds, Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Parliamentary Paper, no. 128 of 1997 (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997). ↩

Daisy Bates, ‘New Aboriginal Reserve’, Sunday Times (Perth) (12 June 1921): 8. ↩

William Harris, ‘Proposed Aboriginal Reserve’, Sunday Times (Perth) (4 September 1921): 6. Although Reece does not connect the episode to broader shifts in Aboriginal activism and international recognition of Indigenous rights, see also Reece, Daisy Bates, 89–90. ↩

James Harris, ‘Native Immorality’, Sunday Times (Perth) (30 October 1921), 12, in response to Daisy Bates, ‘Aboriginal Reserves and Women Patrols’, Sunday Times (Perth) (2 October 1921), 18. ↩

Atwood, Rights for Aborigines, 32–3. ↩

W. Morley to J. G. Murray, 21 February 1939, NLS13451. ↩

‘A White Woman Among Australian Blacks’, Illustrated London News (26 November 1938). ↩

Bates, letter to Murray, 15 October 1938, NLS13451, P 43. ↩

Ibid., 17 July 1938, NLS13451. ↩

Ibid., undated, NLS13451. ↩

Ibid., undated, NLS13451. ↩

Bates, Mr [F. W.] Eardley (University of Adelaide’s registrar), Ooldea, MS365, NLA, F87-35–40. ↩

Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines, 243. ↩

Bates, copy of last will and testament, NLS13451. ↩

The questionnaire is now publicly available as part of the Digital Daisy Bates project: Anonymous, ‘Digital Daisy Bates – the Questionnaire’, n.d., http://www.bates.org.au/quest.html ↩

Nick Thieberger, ‘Digital Daisy Bates’, 2017, http://www.bates.org.au; Nick Thieberger, ‘Daisy Bates in the Digital World’, Language, Land and Song: Studies in Honour of Luise Hercus. London (EL Publishing), 2016, 102–14; William B. McGregor, ‘Daisy Bates’ Documentations of Kimberley Languages’, Language & History 55, no. 2 (November 2012): 79–101. ↩

Christopher Moseley, The UNESCO List of the World’s Languages in Danger: Context and Process: World Oral Literature Project, Occasional Paper Five (Cambridge: World Oral Literature Project, 2012), https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/f3539634-2d6a-4522-ba05-c3c7899dc743/content; Stephen Wurm, ed., Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (Paris: UNESCO, 1996); UNESCO, ‘The World Atlas of Languages’, UNESCO World Atlas of Languages, 2021, https://en.wal.unesco.org/world-atlas-languages ↩

Mabo v. Queensland (No. 2) (‘Mabo case’), No. 23 (High Court of Australia, 3 June 1992). ↩

Ibid. ↩

Atwood, Rights for Aborigines. In 1967 campaigns for civil rights secured a successful referendum that finally included Aboriginal people in the census and allowed the government to make specific laws for them, thus counteracting decades of assimilationist policies. Also consult United Nations, ‘UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)’ (2017), https://en.unesco.org/indigenous-peoples/undrip; Erica-Irene A. Daes, ‘An Overview of the History of Indigenous Peoples: Self-Determination and the United Nations’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 21, no. 1 (1 March 2008): 7–26. ↩

The Whadjuk people belong to the Noongar group in southwestern Australia. On Balbuk’s family, consult Gina Pickering and the National Trust of Australia (WA), Fanny Balbuk Yoreel: Realising a Perth Resistance Fighter (Perth, WA: National Trust of Australia, 2017). ↩

Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines, 69–70. ↩

Daisy Bates, ‘Aboriginal Sketch: Balbuk, Last of the Perth Tribe’, The Australasian (Melbourne) (29 September 1923), 64. Also Bates, ‘Fanny Balbuk-Yoreel: The Last Swan River (Female) Native’, Western Mail (Perth) (1 June 1907), 44, and Daisy Bates, ‘Hooper’s Fence – A Query’, Western Mail (Perth) (18 April 1935), 9. Some of this material was later repurposed as Daisy Bates, ‘Fanny Balbuk-Yoreel: The Last Swan River (Female) Native’, Science of Man, 13.5 (1911): 100–1, continued in 13.6 (1911): 119–21. ↩

John Mathew, letter to Bates, 23 April 1902, Bates Papers, MS365, NLA, F97/304–5. ↩

Bates, ‘Balbuk, Last of the Perth Tribe’, 64. Also Bates, ‘Fanny Balbuk-Yoreel’, 44, and Bates, ‘Hooper’s Fence – A Query’, 9. ↩

Bates, letter to John Mathew, 12 April 1907, p. 1011, MS3197, NLA. ↩

Bates noted that the skull of Balbuk’s grand-uncle and Yalgoonga’s brother, Ya’gan, was in the British Museum. Bates, ‘Fanny Balbuk-Yoreel [continued]’, 120. After a search lasting twenty years, the head was located in Liverpool, exhumed and returned in 1997 as related in H. McGlade, ‘The Repatriation of Yagan: A Story of Manufacturing Dissent’, Law Text and Culture 4 (1998): 245–55. ↩

Pickering and National Trust of Australia (WA), Fanny Balbuk Yoreel. ↩

Bennell v Western Australia, No. 1243 (Federal Court of Australia, 19 September 2006). Bates’s research is also explicitly used alongside Radcliffe-Brown in the court records for Roberts v State of Western Australia, No. 257 (Federal Court of Australia, 21 February 2011). ↩

Government of Western Australia, ‘South West Native Title Settlement’, Government of Western Australia, 21 February 2024, https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-the-premier-and-cabinet/south-west-native-title-settlement. On the case’s complexity and dissent consult Hannah McGlade, ‘The McGlade Case: A Noongar History of Land, Social Justice and Activism’, Australian Feminist Law Journal 43, no. 2 (3 July 2017): 185–210. ↩

Unusually, Bates is mentioned, but quickly glossed over, in Kuper, Anthropology & Anthropologists. For other writings compare Salter, ‘The Great White Queen of the Never Never’; Julia Blackburn, Daisy Bates in the Desert (London: Vintage, 1997); Reece, Daisy Bates; White, ‘Daisy Bates: Legend and Reality’; Cynthia Coyne, ‘“Bye and Bye When All the Natives Have Gone”: Daisy Bates and Billingee’, in Uncommon Ground: White Women in Aboriginal History, ed. Anna Cole, Victoria Haskins, and Fiona Paisley (Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005), 199–216. ↩

Bates, letter to Murray, 17 December 1938, NLS13451. ↩

Chapter 6

Kristina Küntzel-Witt, ‘Georg Wilhelm Steller and Carl Heinrich Merck: German Scientists in Russian Service as Explorers in the North Pacific in the Eighteenth Century’, in Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I, ed. Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess, and Ulrike Strasser, Studies in German History, vol. 22 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019); Ryan Tucker Jones, Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741–1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). ↩

Georg Wilhelm Steller, ‘The Beasts of the Sea (1751)’, in The Fur Seals and Fur-Seal Islands of the North Pacific Ocean, ed. Paul Royster and David Starr Jordan, trans. Walter Miller and Jennie Emerson Miller (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1899), 26, 47. ↩

Martin Sauer, An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia (London: T. Cadell, 1802), 181. ↩

Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff, Bemerkungen auf einer Reise um die Welt in den Jahren 1803 bis 1807, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: F. Wilmans, 1812), 23. ↩

John Fleming, ‘Remarks Illustrative of the Influence of Society on the Distribution of British Animals’, Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 11 (1824): 290–1, 304; John Fleming, History of British Animals, Exhibiting the Descriptive Characters and Systematical Arrangement of the Genera and Species of Quadrupeds, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, Mollusca, and Radiata of the United Kingdom; Including the Indigenous, Extirpated, and Extinct Kinds, Together with Periodical and Occasional Visitants (Edinburgh: Bell & Bradfute, 1828). ↩

George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature; Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (London: Sampson Low, Son & Marston, 1864), 35. ↩

On Marsh’s legacy consult Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 88–9, 93. ↩

Gísli Pálsson, The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024). ↩

Ibid. ↩

Alfred Newton, ‘The Gare-Fowl and Its Historians’, The Natural History Review 12, N.S.5 (1865): 467, 487; Alfred Newton, ‘On the Zoological Aspect of Game Laws’, in Report of the Thirty-Eighth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Norwich in August 1868 (London: John Murray, 1868), 108–9; Henry M. Cowles, ‘A Victorian Extinction: Alfred Newton and the Evolution of Animal Protection’, The British Journal for the History of Science 46, no. 04 (2013): 695–714; Pálsson, The Last of Its Kind. ↩

Ernest Ingersoll, ‘The Effect of the Settlement of North America Upon Its Wild Animals’, Science n.s. 6, no. 144S (1885): 417. ↩

Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920, Studies in Environment and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ↩

J. A. Allen, The American Bisons, Living and Extinct (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1876), 176. ↩

Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison; Miles A. Powell, Vanishing America: Species Extinction, Racial Peril, and the Origins of Conservation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). ↩

Fairfield Osborn, ‘William Temple Hornaday’, Science 85, no. 2210 (1937): 445–6; William Temple Hornaday, The Extermination of the American Bison, with a Sketch of Its Discovery and Life History (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1889), 521; William Temple Hornaday, Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913); William Temple Hornaday and Alwin K. Haagner, The Vanishing Game of South Africa: A Warning and an Appeal (New York, NY, 1922). ↩

Some of the more famous individuals include William Temple Hornaday, Madison Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt. Powell, Vanishing America, 54. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Memorial to the Right Hon. Earl Cromer, K.C.B. and the Governor-General of the Sudan’, Journal of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire 1 (1904): 10. On the broader history of the society consult C. W. Hobley, ‘The Preservation of Wild Life in the Empire’, Journal of the Royal African Society 34, no. 137 (1935): 403–7; John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation, and British Imperialism, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997); David K. Prendergast and William M. Adams, ‘Colonial Wildlife Conservation and the Origins of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire (1903–1914)’, Oryx 37, no. 2 (2003): 251–60; William M. Adams, Against Extinction: The Story of Conservation (London: Earthscan, 2004). ↩

Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness; Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country; Keller and Turek, American Indians and National Parks. ↩

For the best account of the early history of nature conservation consult Raf De Bont, Nature’s Diplomats: Science, Internationalism & Preservation, 1920–1960 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). In the original French, the society’s original names were the ‘International de documentation et de corrélation pour la protection de la nature’ and ‘Office International pour la protection de la nature (1934–1948)’. ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 139–49. ↩

John C. Phillips and Harold J. Coolidge, Jr, The First Five Years: The American Committee for International Wild Life Protection (Cambridge, MA: American Committee for International Wildlife Protection, 1934), 3, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015079999960 ↩

De Bont, Nature’s Diplomats. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Convention Relative to the Preservation of Fauna and Flora in Their Natural State’ (1933); Anonymous, ‘The London Convention for the Protection of African Flora and Fauna’, The Auk 52, no. 4 (1935): 473–4; Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 151. ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 159–66. ↩

Ibid., 161–6. ↩

IUPN, International Union for the Protection of Nature, Established at Fontainebleau, 5 October 1948 (Paris and Brussels: IUPN, 1948). ↩

Unless otherwise stated the institutional history of the IUPN and later IUCN draws from Martin Holdgate, The Green Web: A Union for World Conservation (London: Earthscan, 1999); Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts; De Bont, Nature’s Diplomats. ↩

The American government hosted UNESCO’s Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources and, concurrently, the International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature. IUPN, International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature: Lake Success, 22–29 VIII 1949, Proceedings and Papers (Paris: Brussels: International Union for the Protection of Nature, 1950). On the history of the Red Lists consult Peter Scott, John A Burton, and Richard Fitter, ‘Red Data Books: The Historical Background’, in The Road to Extinction: Problems of Categorizing the Status of Taxa Threatened with Extinction. A Symposium Held by the Species Survival Commission, Madrid, 7 and 9 November, 1984, ed. Richard Fitter and Maisie Fitter (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1987), 1–6; N. J. Collar, ‘The Reasons for Red Data Books’, Oryx 30, no. 2 (1996): 121–30; Craig Hilton-Taylor, ‘A History of the IUCN Red List’, in The IUCN Red List: 50 Years of Conservation, ed. Jane Smart, Craig Hilton-Taylor, and Russell A Mittermeier (Washington, DC: Earth in Focus, 2014), 9–27. ↩

Coolidge was also keen to create a ‘situation map’ detailing the ‘location of seriously threatened species, and calling attention to parks and reserves established by local governments to assure the preservation of such species’. Harold J. Coolidge, ‘Emergency Action for the Preservation of Vanishing Species’, in International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature: Lake Success, 22–29 VIII 1949, Proceedings and Papers (Paris: Brussels: International Union for the Protection of Nature, 1950), 486. For further information on the history of the Survival Service consult C. L. Boyle, ‘The Survival Service Commission’, Oryx 5, no. 1 (1959): 30–5; R. S. R. Fitter, ‘The Survival Service Commission’, Oryx 7, no. 4 (1964): 157–9; Anonymous, ‘Survival Service Commission’, Oryx 7, no. 5 (1964): 217–217; H. J. Coolidge, ‘The Development of the Survival Service of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’, in Proceedings of the Sixth General Assembly, Athens, 11–19 September, 1958 (Brussels: IUCN, 1960), 133–4. ↩

‘Whereas: The world is faced with an increasing list of threatened and vanishing species of fauna and flora, The Conference Resolves: the International Union for the Protection of Nature should establish a “survival service” for the assembling, evaluation, and dissemination of information on and the study of, all species of fauna and flora that appear to be threatened with extinction, in order to assist governments and appropriate agencies in assuring their survival.’ IUPN, International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature: Lake Success, 22–29 VIII 1949, Proceedings and Papers, 183. For the early years, I refer to the Survival Service for consistency but it did change names. Originally established as the Survival Service, it was later renamed the Survival Service Committee and then again to the Survival Service Commission. In 1981, from the Union’s Fifteenth General Assembly, in Christchurch, New Zealand, onwards the name used in official documents changed to the Species Survival Commission. IUCN, Proceedings of the 15th Session of the General Assembly of the IUCN and 15th IUCN Technical Meeting, Christchurch, New Zealand, 11–23 October, 1981 (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1983), passim, http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/GA-15th-009.pdf ↩

Coolidge, ‘Emergency Action for the Preservation of Vanishing Species’, 486–7. ↩

Resolution 16 in IUPN, International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature: Lake Success, 22–29 VIII 1949, Proceedings and Papers, 183–5. Also consult resolutions 15 and 17 on these pages. ↩

A. A. Burbidge and J. Woinarski, ‘Thylacinus Cynocephalus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: E.T21866A21949291’, 2016; Erwin H. Bulte, Richard D. Horan, and Jason F. Shogren, ‘Is the Tasmanian Tiger Extinct? A Biological–Economic Re-Evaluation’, Ecological Economics 45, no. 2 (2003): 271–9; Charles Y. Feigin et al., ‘Genome of the Tasmanian Tiger Provides Insights into the Evolution and Demography of an Extinct Marsupial Carnivore’, Nature Ecology & Evolution 2, no. 1 (11 December 2017): 182–92; Melanie Fillios, Mathew S. Crowther, and Mike Letnic, ‘The Impact of the Dingo on the Thylacine in Holocene Australia’, World Archaeology 44, no. 1 (1 March 2012): 118–34; Barry W. Brook et al., ‘Resolving When (and Where) the Thylacine Went Extinct’, Science of The Total Environment 877 (2023): 162878. ↩

Brook et al., ‘Resolving When (and Where) the Thylacine Went Extinct’. ↩

The card index was begun by Colonel Hoier, and later kept up to date by Jean-Jacques Petter, a naturalist based at the Natural History Museum in Paris, who took over from J.-M. Vrydagh in 1953. For Vrydagh’s full report, see IUPN, Proceedings and Reports of the Second Session of the General Assembly, held in Brussels, 18–23 October, 1950 (Brussels: IUPN, 1951), 24–8, 25; IUPN, Proceedings and Reports of the Fourth General Assembly, Held at Copenhagen (Denmark), 25 August to 3 September 1954 (Brussels: IUPN, 1955), 43. In the 1960s many of the early records of the IUCN were lost in a fire and it is likely that the card index was also destroyed. ↩

For the draft questionnaire consult IUPN, Proceedings and Reports of the Second Session of the General Assembly, held in Brussels, 18–23 October, 1950, 29–30. ↩

IUPN, Proceedings and Reports of the Third General Assembly, Held in Caracas (Venezuela), 3–9 November 1952 (Brussels: IUPN, 1952), 52. ↩

The donation was made by M. Russell and M. Arundel. At the same General Assembly, Coolidge called for the Survival Service to be established as a permanent Commission. IUCN, Proceedings of the Fifth General Assembly, Edinburgh, 20–28 June 1956 (Brussels: IUCN, 1957), 86–9. ↩

IUPN, Proceedings and Reports of the Fourth General Assembly, Held at Copenhagen (Denmark), 25 August to 3 September 1954, 59. ↩

The shift from ‘preservation’ to ‘conservation’ in the union’s name indicates a broader shift away from preserving pristine wildernesses on the model of American national parks to managing wildlife, landscapes, and natural resources in an effort to reduce overall destruction. IUCN, Proceedings of the Fifth General Assembly, Edinburgh, 20–28 June 1956, 89; IUCN, Proceedings of the Sixth General Assembly, Athens, 11–19 September 1958 (Brussels: IUCN, 1960), 134; Coolidge, ‘The Development of the Survival Service of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’. Resolutions 233 and 252, IUCN, Proceedings of the Sixth General Assembly, Athens, 11–19 September 1958, 69, 77. ↩

IUCN, Proceedings of the Seventh General Assembly, Warsaw, 15–24 June 1960 (Brussels: IUCN, 1960), 101–20. ↩

Lee M. Talbot, A Look at Threatened Species: A Report on Some Animals of the Middle East and Southern Asia Which Are Threatened with Extermination (London: Fauna Preservation Society, 1960). The illustrations and maps were the work of Gene Christman, staff illustrator at the University of California’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. ↩

Boyle informed his colleagues of his card index at the Seventh General Assembly in Warsaw, Poland. IUCN, Proceedings of the Seventh General Assembly, Warsaw, 15–24 June 1960, 99–100. Hilton-Taylor, ‘A History of the IUCN Red List’, 14. ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 313–17. ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts. ↩

The updated versions of Boyle’s sheets were written by the naturalists John H. Calaby, James Fisher, Ronald Melville, Noel Simon, and Jack Vincent. IUCN Operations Intelligence Centre, ‘List of Rare Birds, Including Those Thought to Be so but of Which Detailed Information Is Still Lacking’, IUCN Bulletin, New Series 10 (March 1964): Special Supplement; IUCN Operations Intelligence Centre, ‘A Preliminary List of Rare Mammals Including Those Believed to Be Rare but Concerning Which Detailed Information Is Still Lacking’, IUCN Bulletin, New Series 11 (June 1964): Special Supplement between 4–5; Hilton-Taylor, ‘A History of the IUCN Red List’, 15. The lists were quickly amalgamated into a ‘Preliminary List of Rare Mammals and Birds’ featuring 204 mammals and 312 birds and published in the World Wildlife Fund’s first annual report: [IUCN Operations Intelligence Centre], ‘Preliminary List of Rare Mammals and Birds’, in The Launching of a New Ark: First Report of the President and Trustees of the World Wildlife Fund, an International Foundation for Saving the World’s Wildlife and Wild Places, 1961–1964, ed. Peter Scott (London: Collins, 1965), 155–207. ↩

Noel Simon, ed., Red Data Book, Volume 1: Mammalia (Morges, Switzerland: IUCN, 1966); Jack Vincent, ed., Red Data Book, Volume 2: Aves (Morges, Switzerland: IUCN, 1966); Robert Rush Miller, ed., Red Data Book, Volume 4: Pisces (Morges, Switzerland: IUCN, 1969); René Honegger, ed., Red Data Book, Volume 3: Amphibia and Reptilia (Morges, Switzerland: IUCN, 1975). ↩

IUCN, Proceedings of the Tenth General Assembly, Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, 24 November–1 December 1969, Volume II (Morges, Switzerland: IUCN, 1970), 48. ↩

James Fisher, Noel Simon, and Jack Vincent, The Red Book: Wildlife in Danger (London: Collins, 1969); IUCN, Proceedings of the Tenth General Assembly, Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, 24 November–1 December 1969, Volume II, 48. ↩

Tom Harrisson, ‘The New Red Data Book’, Oryx 12, no. 3 (1974): 321. ↩

Jon Agar, ‘What Counts as Threatened? Science in the Sixth Extinction’, in Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, ed. Patrick Manning and Mat Savelli (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 2016), 180–94. ↩

F. Fraser Darling, ‘Red Data Book, 1. Mammalia, compiled by Noel Simon. 2. Aves, compiled by Jack Vincent. Survival Service Commission, IUCN, Morges, Vaud, Switzerland, 70s. each.’, Oryx 9, no. 1 (1967): 41–2; Ivor Montagu, ‘The Red Book: The World’s Endangered Mammals and Birds’, Oryx 8, no. 5 (1966): 281; Ivor Montagu, ‘The Red Book for All’, Oryx 10, no. 2 (1969): 103–5. ↩

Montagu, ‘The Red Book for All’, 103. ↩

Fisher, Simon, and Vincent, The Red Book: Wildlife in Danger, 11. ↩

Montagu, ‘The Red Book for All’, 104. ↩

IUCN, Proceedings of the Thirteenth (Extraordinary) General Assembly, Geneva, Switzerland, 19–21 April 1977 (Morges, Switzerland: IUCN, 1977), 86; Hilton-Taylor, ‘A History of the IUCN Red List’. ↩

Gren Lucas and Hugh Synge, The IUCN Plant Red Data Book: Comprising Red Data Sheets on 250 Selected Plants Threatened on a World Scale (Morges, Switzerland: IUCN, 1978), https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/5780; Warren B. King, Endangered Birds of the World: The ICPB Bird Red Data Book (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/6491 ↩

The Species Conservation Monitoring Unit (SCMU) was superseded by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), which is now the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). Martin Jenkins and Jane Thornback, The IUCN Mammal Red Data Book: Part 1, Threatened Mammalian Taxa of the Americas and the Australasian Zoogeographic Region (excluding Cetacea) (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1982), https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/5841; Hilton-Taylor, ‘A History of the IUCN Red List’, 17. ↩

Birds were arranged by Order, Family, and Species, while mammals were arranged by Order. ↩

Simon, Red Data Book, Volume 1: Mammalia, 1/7. ↩

Ibid. ↩

The original Red Data Books do not have page numbers, with each species given a reference code instead. The thylacine was species 1/18 in Simon, Red Data Book, Volume 1: Mammalia. ↩

Vincent, Red Data Book, Volume 2: Aves, 2/4. ↩

Richard Fitter and Maisie Fitter, eds, The Road to Extinction: Problems of Categorizing the Status of Taxa Threatened with Extinction. A Symposium Held by the Species Survival Commission, Madrid, 7 and 9 November 1984 (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1987). The name changes after IUCN, Proceedings of the 15th Session of the General Assembly of the IUCN and 15th IUCN Technical Meeting, Christchurch, New Zealand, 11–23 October, 1981. For a bibliography of lists in this period consult John A. Burton, ‘Bibliography of Red Data Books (Part 1, Animal Species)’, Oryx 18, no. 1 (1984): 61–4. ↩

By 1969, species were classified as Endangered, Rare, Depleted, and Indeterminate. Three years later, these were amended again with new colour coding to Endangered (red), Vulnerable (amber), Rare (white), Out Of Danger (green), and Indeterminate (grey). Later, new possibilities were added when ‘Extinct, Insufficiently Known, Commercially Threatened, and Not Threatened’ were used to make sense of threat or loss. For an example of this system in use see the revised version of the Red Data Book on Fishes. The proceedings were later published as The Road to Extinction edited by Richard and Maisie Fitter. Richard served as Honorary Secretary of the Fauna Preservation Society, while Maisie edited the Society’s journal Oryx for nearly twenty years from 1963, before editing the Commission’s Newsletter. Fitter and Fitter, The Road to Extinction: Problems of Categorizing the Status of Taxa Threatened with Extinction. A Symposium Held by the Species Survival Commission, Madrid, 7 and 9 November 1984. ‘Richard and Maisie Fitter’, in IUCN, Proceedings of the 16th Session of the General Assembly of the IUCN and 16th Technical Meeting, Madrid, Spain, 5–14 November 1984 (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1984), 182. Hilton-Taylor, ‘A History of the IUCN Red List’, 18. ↩

Nathalie Pettorelli, ‘Georgina Mace (1953–2020)’, Nature 586 (2020): 495. This account draws heavily from the most detailed account of this shift to quantitative criteria in Agar, ‘What Counts as Threatened? Science in the Sixth Extinction’. ↩

Cited in Agar, ‘What Counts as Threatened? Science in the Sixth Extinction’. ↩

Quammen, The Song of the Dodo, 525–6, 571. ↩

Georgina M. Mace and Russell Lande, ‘Assessing Extinction Threats: Toward a Reevaluation of IUCN Threatened Species Categories’, Conservation Biology 5, no. 2 (1991): 151. ↩

The final categories were Extinct, Extinct In The Wild, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Lower Risk, Data Deficient, and Not Evaluated. Lower Risk had three subcategories: ‘conservation dependent’, ‘near threatened’, and ‘least concern’. Of the final categories, Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable were all defined quantitatively, with the rest providing room for qualitative judgements. Agar, ‘What Counts as Threatened? Science in the Sixth Extinction’. ↩

IUCN Species Survival Commission, IUCN Red List Categories (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1994). ↩

Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking, 229–93. ↩

Hilton-Taylor, ‘A History of the IUCN Red List’, 22. ↩

Ibid., 27. ↩

For the hypothetical total number of species consult Camilo Mora et al., ‘How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?’, PLOS Biology 9, no. 8 (23 August 2011): e1001127. For discussion and other figures consult Wiens, ‘How Many Species Are There on Earth?’; S. N. Stuart et al., ‘The Barometer of Life’, Science 328, no. 5975 (2010): 177; Cynthia S. Parr et al., ‘The Encyclopedia of Life volume 2: Providing Global Access to Knowledge About Life on Earth’, Biodiversity Data Journal, no. 2 (2014): e1079; ‘Encyclopedia of Life’, Encyclopedia of Life, accessed 1 July 2021, https://eol.org. For figures of the numbers of species listed consult IUCN, ‘Barometer of Life’, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 2024, https://www.iucnredlist.org/en ↩

Stuart et al., ‘The Barometer of Life’; Parr et al., ‘The Encyclopedia of Life volume 2’. ↩

Irus Braverman, ‘En-Listing Life: Red Is the Color of Threatened Species Lists’, in Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World, ed. Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-Claire Collard (London: Routledge, 2015), 17, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315762760; Irus Braverman, ‘The Regulatory Life of Threatened Species Lists’, in Animals, Biopolitics, Law: Lively Legalities (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 39–58. ↩

Anna Santos and Thitikan Satchabut, ‘Do Wildlife Trade Bans Enhance or Undermine Conservation Efforts?’, Applied Biodiversity Perspective 1, no. 3 (2011): 1–15; Michael Hoffmann et al., ‘The Impact of Conservation on the Status of the World’s Vertebrates’, Science 330, no. 6010 (10 December 2010): 1503–9. ↩

I’m grateful to Nicky Reeves for alerting me to this practice. Rebecca Atkinson, ‘Twenty Thefts of Rhino Horn in Six Months’, Museums Association, 9 August 2011, https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2011/08/10082011-rhino-horn; Anonymous, ‘Rhino Horn Raiders Steal Replicas from Tring Museum’, BBC News (27 August 2011), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-14693144 ↩

For the most elegant discussion of the meaning of Red Lists consult Heise, Imagining Extinction. ↩

After the initial resolution, the first Green List related to protected areas. IUCN, ‘World Conservation Congress: Resolution 041’ (IUCN, 2012), 041, https://portals.iucn.org/library; IUCN, ‘IUCN Green List of Protected Areas and Conserved Areas: Standard Version 1.1’ (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 2017); IUCN, ‘IUCN Green List: Explore’, IUCN Green List, 2024, https://iucngreenlist.org/explore. On the Green Status of species: IUCN, ‘The IUCN Green Status of Species’, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, n.d., https://www.iucnredlist.org/en; H. Resit Akçakaya et al., ‘Quantifying Species Recovery and Conservation Success to Develop an IUCN Green List of Species’, Conservation Biology 32, no. 5 (October 2018): 1128–38. ↩

Paul A. Johnsgard, A Chorus of Cranes (Denver, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2015), 100–54. ↩

Laura J. Martin, Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022). ↩

Birdlife International, ‘Grus Americana. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: E.T22692156A18124285’ (2020). ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 384; De Bont, Nature’s Diplomats, 33–6. ↩

De Bont, Nature’s Diplomats. ↩

Chapter 7

This account of the impact draws from Walter Alvarez, T rex and the Crater of Doom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 7; Michael J. Benton, The Dinosaurs Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2019), 254–6; Robert A. DePalma et al., ‘A Seismically Induced Onshore Surge Deposit at the Kpg Boundary, North Dakota’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 17 (23 April 2019): 8190–9. ↩

G. R. Chancellor and John Van Wyhe, eds, Charles Darwin’s Notebooks from the Voyage of the Beagle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). ↩

The Darwin Correspondence Project, based at the University Library at the University of Cambridge where Darwin studied, took nearly fifty years of transatlantic collaboration to track down surviving letters written by, or to, Darwin, and publish them in scholarly editions. The full correspondence is available online at https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk, and represents one of the most outstanding academic collaborations relevant to nineteenth-century science. ↩

For the best overview of the work’s publication history consult Secord, ‘Introduction’. Also, Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam; Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time; O’Connor, The Earth on Show, 163–87. ↩

Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, passim. ↩

Paul Elliott, ‘Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and the Origins of the Evolutionary Worldview in British Provincial Scientific Culture, 1770–1850’, Isis 94, no. 1 (2003): 1–29; M. J. S. Hodge and Gregory Radick, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, 2nd ed., Cambridge Companions to Philosophy (Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). ↩

Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 281. ↩

Ibid., 310–11. ↩

Ibid., 321–2. On the lasting legacies of Darwin’s claim about the imperfection of the geological record consult David Sepkoski, Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012). ↩

This section is heavily indebted to David Sepkoski. As the son of Jack Sepkoski, a palaeontologist who made important contributions to understanding mass extinctions in the 1980s and a historian of palaeobiology, David’s research provides the most detailed and authoritative account of the shifting relationships between biology, geology, and palaeontology. References are given throughout this chapter as the most relevant, but the most exhaustive account is Sepkoski, Rereading the Fossil Record. ↩

Norman D. Newell, ‘Periodicity in Invertebrate Evolution’, Journal of Paleontology 26 (1952): 381, 384. Also consult Norman D. Newell, ‘Catastrophism and the Fossil Record’, Evolution 10, no. 1 (1956): 97–101; Norman D. Newell, ‘Paleontological Gaps and Geochronology’, Journal of Paleontology 36 (1962): 592–610; Norman D. Newell, ‘Crises in the History of Life’, Scientific American 208, no. 2 (1963): 76–93. ↩

Newell, ‘Crises in the History of Life’, 76. ↩

Niles Eldredge, ‘Norman Dennis Newell, 1909–2005’, The Geological Society of London, 2005, https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/About/History/Obituaries-2001-onwards/Obituaries-2005/Norman-Dennis-Newell-1909--2005 ↩

Ibid.; Sepkoski, Rereading the Fossil Record. ↩

Sepkoski, Rereading the Fossil Record, 142–84. ↩

J. John Sepkoski et al., ‘Phanerozoic Marine Diversity and the Fossil Record’, Nature 293, no. 5832 (1981): 435–7. For Sepkoski and Raup’s careers and contributions as summarized here consult J. John Sepkoski, Jr, ‘What I Did with My Research Career: Or How Research and Biodiversity Yielded Data on Extinction’, in The Mass-Extinction Debates: How Science Works in a Crisis, ed. William Glen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 132–44; David M. Raup, ‘The Extinction Debates: A View from the Trenches’, in The Mass-Extinction Debates, ed. Glen, 144–51; Derek E. G. Briggs, ‘J. John Sepkoski Jr (1948-99)’, Nature 400, no. 6744 (1999): 514; Douglas H. Erwin, ‘David M. Raup (1933–2015)’, Nature 524, no. 7563 (2015): 36; Sepkoski, Rereading the Fossil Record. ↩

Formally, in the Late Ordovician, Late Devonian, Late Permian, Late Triassic, and Late Cretaceous periods. D. M. Raup and J. J. Sepkoski, ‘Mass Extinctions in the Marine Fossil Record’, Science 215, no. 4539 (1982): 1501–3; D. M. Raup and J. J. Sepkoski, ‘Periodicity of Extinctions in the Geologic Past’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 81, no. 3 (1984): 801–5; David M. Raup, The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science, rev. and expanded ed. (New York: Norton, 1999). ↩

Sepkoski, Rereading the Fossil Record, 319–23. ↩

Michael J. Benton, When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, new ed. (2003; repr., London: Thames & Hudson, 2015), and Michael J. Benton, Extinctions: How life Survives, Adapts and Evolves (London: Thames and Hudson, 2023). ↩

Chris D. Thomas, Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction (London: Allen Lane, 2017). ↩

Michael J. Benton, ‘Scientific Methodologies in Collision: The History of the Study of the Extinction of the Dinosaurs’, Evolutionary Biology 24 (1990): 371–400; William Glen, ed., The Mass-Extinction Debates: How Science Works in a Crisis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 237–8; Sepkoski, Rereading the Fossil Record, 71. ↩

Newell, ‘Crises in the History of Life’, 91–2. More recently, the palaeontologist Michael Benton has identified more than a hundred published hypotheses with theories ranging from the outlandish to the plausible, including reduced libido, sexual promiscuity causing AIDS, psychological disorders leading to suicide, predation, changes in climate, and major volcanic eruptions. Benton, ‘Scientific Methodologies in Collision’; Benton, The Dinosaurs Rediscovered, 258, 290–3. ↩

Walter Alvarez, ‘The Historical Record in the Scaglia Limestone at Gubbio: Magnetic Reversals and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction’, Sedimentology 56 (2009): 137–48. ↩

The story is well rehearsed in the literature. This account draws from Alvarez, T rex and the Crater of Doom; Benton, When Life Nearly Died. ↩

Luis W. Alvarez et al., ‘Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction’, Science 208, no. 4448 (1980): 1095–1108. ↩

John W. (John Wesley) Judd et al., The Eruption of Krakatoa, and Subsequent Phenomena: Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society, ed. G. J. (George James) Symons (London: Trübner & Co., 1888); Marilynn S. Olson, Donald W. Olson, and Russell L. Doescher, ‘Marilynn S. Olson, Donald W. Olson, and Russell L. Doescher on the Blood-Red Sky of Munch’s the Scream’, Environmental History 12, no. 1 (2007): 131–5. ↩

Three years later, another landmark paper argued that the explosion of a nuclear bomb would trigger a nuclear winter contributing to mass death. R. P. Turco et al., ‘Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions’, Science 222 (1983): 1283–93. ↩

For a selection of the coverage consult Clive Cookson, ‘Mass Extinction of Life’, The Times (11 July 1980), The Times Digital Archive; Robert C. Cowen, ‘Comets: A Bit of Space Debris Sparks Fantasies’, Christian Science Monitor (1 October 1980), sec. NEWS; Walter Sullivan, ‘Two New Theories Offered on Mass Extinctions in Earth’s Past’, New York Times, 1980, sec. Science Times; Derek York, ‘DINOSAURS Clay “Sandwich” May Hold Answer to Mass Extinctions’, Globe and Mail (15 September 1980); Walter Sullivan, ‘Mass Extinctions Increasingly Blamed on Catastrophes from the Sky’, New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast) (19 January 1982), sec. C; Robert Cooker, ‘LONG AGO, SOMETHING HAPPENED’, Boston Globe (6 January 1982); Anonymous, ‘The Meteor Did It’, Boston Globe (7 November 1983), sec. SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY; Malcolm W. Browne, ‘Dinosaur Experts Resist Meteor Extinction Idea’, New York Times, 1985, sec. Science. ↩

Raup’s peer review is reprinted in Raup, The Nemesis Affair, 68. ↩

Ibid., 69. ↩

Raup, ‘The Extinction Debate’, 145. ↩

Raup, The Nemesis Affair, 70–1. ↩

Glen, The Mass-Extinction Debates, 9. ↩

Alan R. Hildebrand et al., ‘Chicxulub Crater: A Possible Cretaceous/Tertiary Boundary Impact Crater on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico’, Geology 19, no. 9 (1991): 867–71. ↩

The most detailed history of the Manhattan Project remains Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1986). ↩

Thomas Widner et al., ‘Final Report of the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment (LAHDRA) Project’ (Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). ↩

Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking, 8. ↩

Turco et al., ‘Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions’; Carl Sagan and Richard P. Turco, ‘Nuclear Winter in the Post-Cold War Era’, Journal of Peace Research 30, no. 4 (1993): 369–73. ↩

Colin N. Waters et al., ‘The Anthropocene Is Functionally and Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene’, Science 351, no. 6269 (2016): aad2622. ↩

Koch et al., ‘Earth System Impacts of the European Arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492’. ↩

Jan Zalasiewicz et al., ‘The Working Group on the Anthropocene: Summary of Evidence and Interim Recommendations’, Anthropocene 19 (2017): 55–60; Will Steffen et al., ‘The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration’, The Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (2015): 81–98; Erle C. Ellis et al., ‘Dating the Anthropocene: Towards an Empirical Global History of Human Transformation of the Terrestrial Biosphere’, ed. Joel D. Blum, Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 1 (2013): 000018; Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, ‘Defining the Anthropocene’, Nature 519, no. 7542 (March 2015): 171–80; Colin N. Waters et al., ‘Candidate Sites and Other Reference Sections for the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point of the Anthropocene Series’, The Anthropocene Review 10, no. 1 (2023): 3–24; Francine M. G. McCarthy et al., ‘The Varved Succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a Candidate Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the Anthropocene Series’, The Anthropocene Review 10, no. 1 (1 April 2023): 146–76. For coverage of the rejection consult Alexandra Witze, ‘Geologists Reject the Anthropocene as Earth’s New Epoch – after 15 Years of Debate’, Nature 627, no. 8003 (6 March 2024): 249–50. On planetary scars see David Farrier, Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils (London: 4th Estate, 2020). ↩

Myers, The Sinking Ark, ix, 5, 3. ↩

The term’s coinage is usually attributed to Walter G. Rosen in 1985, but, more recently, Sahotna Sarkar has found earlier usages. Quammen, The Song of the Dodo, 529–41, 570–1; Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 353–6; Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking; Sahotra Sarkar, ‘Origin of the Term Biodiversity’, BioScience 71, no. 9 (2021): 893. ↩

Sepkoski, Catastrophic Thinking; Federica Bocchi et al., ‘Are We in a Sixth Mass Extinction? The Challenges of Answering and Value of Asking’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2022, 722107; John C Briggs, ‘Emergence of a Sixth Mass Extinction?’, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 122, no. 2 (2017): 243–8; Robert H. Cowie, Philippe Bouchet, and Benoît Fontaine, ‘The Sixth Mass Extinction: Fact, Fiction or Speculation?’, Biological Reviews 97, no. 2 (2022): 640–63. ↩

Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness; Sadiah Qureshi, ‘Dying Americans’, in From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c.1800–1940, ed. Astrid Swenson and Peter Mandler, Proceedings of the British Academy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 267–86. ↩

Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, ‘Convention on Biological Diversity: First Draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’ (United Nations, 2021); Wilson, Half-Earth; E. Dinerstein et al., ‘A Global Deal For Nature: Guiding Principles, Milestones, and Targets’, Science Advances 5, no. 4 (5 April 2019): aaw2869; E. Dinerstein et al., ‘A “Global Safety Net” to Reverse Biodiversity Loss and Stabilize Earth’s Climate’, Science Advances 6, no. 36 (2020): abb2824. ↩

Wilson, Half-Earth. ↩

Judith Schleicher et al., ‘Protecting Half of the Planet Could Directly Affect over One Billion People’, Nature Sustainability 2, no. 12 (December 2019): 1094–6. ↩

Zoe Todd, ‘Respect for Autonomy and Sovereignty of Indigenous and Local Peoples, Not Arbitrary Protection Targets, a Key to Protecting Global Biodiversity’, Critical Indigenous Fish Philosophy, 1 December 2022, https://fishphilosophy.org/2022/12/01/indigenous-sovereignty-and-autonomy-not-arbitrary-protection-targets-a-key-to-protecting-global-biodiversity ↩

Survival International et al., ‘NGO Concerns over the Proposed 30% Target for Protected Areas and Absence of Safeguards for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities’, 2020, https://assets.survivalinternational.org/documents/1959/final-en-ngo-concerns-the-proposed-30-target-for-protected-areas-and-absence-of-safeguards-for-indigenous-people-and-local-communities-200901.pdf; Survival International et al., ‘Concerns about Protected Areas Targeted in Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’, 11 August 2021, https://redd-monitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Philanthropic-Statement-on-CBD-30x30-INITIATIVE-FINAL-2021.Aug_.13-submitted-to-Mr.-Francis-Ogwal-Mr.-Basile-van-Havre-Co-Chairs-of-GBF.pdf ↩

Chapter 8

Anonymous, ‘Oldest Living Individual Tree’, Guinness World Records, accessed 24 May 2023, https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-living-individual-tree ↩

Anonymous, ‘Fortingall’, Scotland’s Yew Tree Heritage Initiative, 2022, https://scotlands-yew-trees.org/yewtree/fortingall/; Anonymous, ‘The Tree’, Visit Lincolnshire, n.d., https://bowthorpeparkfarm.co.uk/the-tree ↩

National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS, NSW), ‘World Heritage Site Nomination for the Greater Blue Mountains Area’, 2000, https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/917.pdf ↩

James Woodford, The Wollemi Pine: The Incredible Discovery of a Living Fossil from the Age of the Dinosaurs, new ed. (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2005), 1–44. ↩

Marie-Pierre Ledru and Janelle Stevenson, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Genus Araucaria: A Southern Hemisphere Climatic Connection’, in Peopled Landscapes: Archaeological and Biogeographic Approaches to Landscapes, ed. Simon G. Haberle and Bruno David, 1st ed. (ANU Press, 2012); Ruth A. Stockey, ‘The Araucariaceae: An Evolutionary Perspective’, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 37, nos 1–2 (July 1982): 133–54; Rod L. Bieleski and Mike D. Wilcox, eds, Araucariaceae: Proceedings of the 2002 Araucariaceae Symposium, Araucaria-Agathis-Wollemia, International Dendrology Society, Auckland, New Zealand, 14–17 March 2002 (Dunedin, NZ: International Dendrology Society, 2009). ↩

Wyn Jones, Kenneth Hill, and Jan Allen, ‘Wollemia Nobilis, a New Living Australian Genus and Species in the Araucariaceae’, Telopea 6 (1995): 173–6. For more on the Araucariaceae, see Bieleski and Wilcox, Araucariaceae: Proceedings of the 2002 Araucariaceae Symposium; Ibid. ↩

Jones, Hill, and Allen, ‘Wollemia Nobilis, a New Living Australian Genus and Species in the Araucariaceae’, 176. ↩

These numbers reflect the population distribution after the Black Summer of wildfires. Dominic A. DiPaolo and John C. Villella, ‘Ecology and Conservation of a Living Fossil: Australia’s Wollemi Pine (Wollemia Nobilis)’, in Imperiled: The Encyclopedia of Conservation, ed. Dominick A. DellaSala and Michael I. Goldstein (Oxford: Elsevier, 2022), 884–94. ↩

Mike Macphail et al., ‘Australia: “Wollemi Pine”: Old Pollen Records for a Newly Discovered Genus of Gymnosperm’, Geology Today 11, no. 2 (1995): 48–50; Mike Macphail et al., ‘First Evidence for Wollemi Pine-Type Pollen (Dilwynites: Araucariaceae) in South America’, ed. Lee A. Newsom, PLOS ONE 8, no. 7 (2013): e69281; Mike Macphail and Raymond J. Carpenter, ‘New Potential Nearest Living Relatives for Araucariaceae Producing Fossil Wollemi Pine-Type Pollen (Dilwynites Granulatus W. K. Harris, 1965)’, Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology 38, no. 1 (2014): 135–9. ↩

T. Carrick Chambers, Andrew N. Drinnan, and Stephen McLoughlin, ‘Some Morphological Features of Wollemi Pine (Wollemia Nobilis: Araucariaceae) and Their Comparison to Cretaceous Plant Fossils’, International Journal of Plant Sciences 159, no. 1 (1998): 160–71; Cheryl Jones, ‘Triumph of the Coneheads’, Bulletin (3 March 1998). ↩

John 11:1–44 (King James Version). ↩

Roger Maynard, ‘Jurassic Era Relics Found in Remote Australian Forest’, The Times (15 December 1994); Tom Anderson, ‘Aussies Find Tree from the Dinosaur Age’, United Press International (13 December 1994); Anonymous, ‘“Living Fossil” Trees a Scientific Sensation’, The Age (15 December 1994); Barbara G. Briggs, ‘From 50 Million Years Ago – the Wollemi Pine’, American Conifer Society Bulletin 12, no. 1 (1995): 8–9; Randy Bayes, ‘New Conifer Found in Australia’, American Conifer Society Bulletin 12, no. 1 (1995): 6–7; Anonymous, ‘Wollemi Pine Thought to Be Living Relic of Dinosaur Age’, Technology Index 8, no. 1 (1995): 3–4; Ken D. Hill, ‘Wollemi Pine: Discovering a Living Fossil’, Nature & Resources 32 (1996): 20–5. ↩

H. H. Hu and W. C. Cheng, ‘On the New Family Metasequoiaceae and on Metasequoia Glyptostroboides, a Living Species of the Genus Metasequoia Found in Szechuan and Hupeh’, Bulletin of the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology, n.s., 1 (1948): 154–61; H. H. Hu, ‘How Metasequoia, the “Living Fossil”, Was Discovered in China’, Arnoldia 58/59, no. 4/1 (1998): 4–7. ↩

Ralph W. Chaney, ‘“As Remarkable as Discovering a Living Dinosaur”: Redwoods in China’, Arnoldia 58/59, no. 4/1 (1998): 23–32. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Out of the Past’, The Times (4 November 1948). ↩

J. Linsley Gressitt, ‘The California Academy-Lingnan Dawn-Redwood Expedition’, Arnoldia 58/59, no. 4/1 (1998): 35–9; Yuheng Zhang, ‘“The Panda of Plants”: The Discovery of Dawn Redwood and National Identity Construction in Modern China’, International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 7, no. 1 (2019): 271–300. ↩

Ralph W. Chaney, ‘Redwoods in China’, Natural History Magazine 47 (1948): 440–4; Chaney, ‘As Remarkable as Discovering a Living Dinosaur’; Mike Browell, ‘The Creation of the Longest Tree Avenue in the World’, Arboricultural Journal 35, no. 1 (2013): 50–4. ↩

Zhang, ‘“The Panda of Plants”’. ↩

This happened almost immediately, as in Chaney, ‘Redwoods in China’. ↩

Arun Agrawal, ‘Dismantling the Divide Between Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge’, Development and Change 26, no. 3 (1995): 413–39; Sujit Sivasundaram, ‘Sciences and the Global: On Methods, Questions, and Theory’, Isis 101, no. 1 (March 2010): 146–58. ↩

M. J. S. Rudwick, Earth’s Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 228–37. According to the latest Iteration of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, the earth is 4.567 billion years old. ↩

This account of Australia’s geological formation draws from Richard S. Blewett, Brian L. N. Kennett, and David L. Huston, ‘Australia in Time and Space’, in Shaping a Nation: A Geology of Australia, ed. Richard S. Blewett (Canberra, ACT: Australian National University Press, 2012), 46–119. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Prehistoric Wollemi Pine Trademarked’, Times of India (3 August 1995), sec. World; Associated Press, ‘Australia Puts Trademark on Prehistoric Pine Trees’, Columbian (1995), sec. Discovery. ↩

Department of Environment and Conservation, New South Wales, Declaration of Critical Habitat for the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia Nobilis) (Hurstville, NSW: Dept. of Environment and Conservation, NSW, 2007); Department of Environment and Conservation, ‘Wollemia Nobilis: Wollemi Pine Recovery Plan’ (Department of Environment and Conservation, NSW, 2007); IUCN, ‘Wollemia Nobilis: Thomas, P.: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2011: E.T34926A9898196’ (International Union for Conservation of Nature, 20 October 2010). ↩

Endersby, Imperial Nature; Drayton, Nature’s Government. ↩

Lionel Gilbert, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney: A History 1816–1985 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986); Drayton, Nature’s Government; Jim Endersby, ‘A Garden Enclosed: Botanical Barter in Sydney, 1818–39’, The British Journal for the History of Science 33, no. 3 (September 2000): 313–34; Endersby, Imperial Nature. ↩

Tom Anderson, ‘“Dinosaur Plants” for the Home’, United Press International (15 December 1994). ↩

K. E. Pohio et al., ‘Cuttings of Wollemi Pine Tolerate Moderate Photoinhibition and Remain Highly Capable of Root Formation’, Trees 19, no. 5 (2005): 587–95. ↩

Stephen J. Trueman, Geoff S. Pegg, and Judith King, ‘Domestication for Conservation of an Endangered Species: The Case of the Wollemi Pine’, Tree and Forestry Science and Biotechnology 1 (2007): 1–10. ↩

Cited prices include buyer’s premium and sales tax. Chris Callaghan, ‘Botanical Sale of the Century Wollemi Pine Auction’, n.d. ↩

Callaghan, ‘Botanical Sale of the Century Wollemi Pine Auction’; Anonymous, ‘Jurassic Bark Fetches Big Bucks’; Richard Macey, ‘Living Fossils Grow into Pots of Money’, Sydney Morning Herald (30 August 1996), sec. NEWS AND FEATURES. ↩

Kristy Shaw and Abby Hird, Global Survey of Ex Situ Conifer Collections (Richmond: BGCI, 2014). ↩

Ibid., 4. ↩

Albert Van Dijk, ‘Australia’s Environment: Mid-Year Update 2019/2020’ (Canberra, ACT: Australian National University & TERN, 2021). ↩

For official figures of the damage caused, consult Lesley Hughes et al., ‘Summer of Crisis’ (Climate Council of Australia, 2020); Natural Hazards Research Australia, ‘Understanding the Black Summer Bushfires Through Research: A Summary of Key Findings from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC’ (Natural Hazards Research Australia, 2023). ↩

Sara Spary, ‘Australia’s Prehistoric Wollemi Pine Trees Saved from Bushfires in Secret Government Mission’, CNN (15 January 2020), https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/australia/dinosaur-pines-rescued-scli-intl/index.html; Brigit Katz, ‘Australian Firefighters Have Saved the Last Groves of a Rare, Prehistoric Tree’, Smithsonian Magazine (17 January 2020), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/australian-firefighters-have-saved-last-groves-rare-prehistoric-tree-180974013; John Pickrell and Elizabeth Pennisi, ‘Record U.S. and Australian Fires Raise Fears for Many Species’, Science 370, no. 6512 (2020): 18–19; Peter Hannam, ‘“Dinosaur Trees” Survived Black Summer, but They Haven’t Recovered Enough for the next Bushfire’, The Sydney Morning Herald (13 January 2021), sec. Conservation, https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/dinosaur-trees-survived-black-summer-but-they-haven-t-recovered-enough-for-the-next-bushfire-20210113-p56tty.html ↩

For official figures of the damage caused, consult John Pickrell, ‘Australia’s Vulnerable Species Hit Hard by Fires’, Science 366, no. 6472 (2019): 1427–8; John Pickrell, ‘As Fires Rage Across Australia, Fears Grow for Rare Species’, Science 366, no. 6468 (2019): 937; John Pickrell, ‘Australian Blazes Will “Reframe Our Understanding of Bushfire”’, Science 366, no. 6468 (2019): 937–937; Hughes et al., ‘Summer of Crisis’; Natural Hazards Research Australia, ‘Understanding the Black Summer Bushfires Through Research: A Summary of Key Findings from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC’. ↩

Lisa Cox, ‘Wollemi Pines Given Special Protected Status after Being Saved from Bushfire Disaster’, The Guardian (15 January 2021), sec. Environment, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/15/nsw-wollemi-pines-given-special-protected-status-after-being-saved-from-bushfire-disaster; NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, ‘Assets of Intergenerational Significance (AIS)’, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, n.d., https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/conservation-programs/assets-of-intergenerational-significance; Ibid. NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, ‘Assets of Intergenerational Significance Conservation Action Plans Consultation’, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, 2023, https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/parks-reserves-and-protected-areas/park-management/assets-of-intergenerational-significance/assets-of-intergenerational-significance-conservation-action-plans ↩

De Bont, Nature’s Diplomats; Holdgate, The Green Web. ↩

IUPN, Proceedings and Reports of the Third General Assembly, Held in Caracas (Venezuela), 3–9 September 1952, 53. ↩

IUPN, Proceedings and Reports of the Fourth General Assembly, Held at Copenhagen (Denmark), 25 August to 3 September 1954, 59. ↩

Ibid., 43, 59. ↩

IUCN, Proceedings of the Tenth General Assembly, Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, 24 November–1 December 1969, Volume II, 49; Ronald Melville, Red Data Book 5: Angiospermae (Morges, Switzerland: IUCN, 1970); Martin J. S. Sands, ‘Ronald Melville: 1903–1985’, Kew Bulletin 41, no. 4 (1986): 761–8. ↩

Bayard Webster, ‘Plants Called Endangered, Along With Rare Animals’, New York Times (11 November 1971), sec. Archives. ↩

Grenville Lucas, ‘Threatened Plants – How to Save Them’, Oryx 13, no. 3 (1976): 257. ↩

United Nations, ‘Report of the United Nations Conference on Human Environment: Stockholm, 5–16 June 1972’ (New York, NY: United Nations, 1973). ↩

Grenville L. Lucas and A. H. M. Synge, ‘The IUCN Threatened Plants Committee and Its Work Throughout the World’, Environmental Conservation 4, no. 3 (October 1977): 179–87. ↩

Lucas and Synge, The IUCN Plant Red Data Book; Lucas, ‘Threatened Plants – How to Save Them’; Kerry S. Walter and Harriett J. Gillett, The IUCN Red Data Book of Threatened Plants (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, 1998), https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/5780. For contemporary discussion of the importance of this research consult Hugh Synge, Harry Townsend, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, eds, Survival or Extinction: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Entitled the Practical Role of Botanic Gardens in the Conservation of Rare Plants and Threatened Plants, 11–17 September 1978 (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Bentham-Moxon Trust, 1979). ↩

Sara Oldfield, Charlotte Lusty, and Amy MacKinven, The World List of Threatened Trees (Cambridge: World Conservation Press, 1998), 7. The authors defined a tree as a ‘woody plant growing on a single stem usually to a height of over two metres ’ (original emphasis), but they acknowledged a precise figure for the number of tree species was made more difficult by lack of consensus on how to define a tree. ↩

Botanic Gardens Conservation International, ‘State of the World’s Trees’ (Richmond, UK: Botanic Gardens Conservation International, 2021). ↩

Botanic Gardens Conservation International, ‘GlobalTree Portal’, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, accessed 8 May 2023, https://www.bgci.org/resources/bgci-databases/globaltree-portal; Emily Beech, Ryan Hills, and Malin Rivers, ‘GlobalTree Portal: Visualizing the State of the World’s Trees’, Oryx 56, no. 3 (2022): 332. ↩

Botanic Gardens Conservation International, ‘State of the World’s Trees’, 4. ↩

For an excellent study of an endangered crop consult Helen Anne Curry, Endangered Maize: Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022). ↩

Anna Tsing, ‘Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species’, Environmental Humanities 1 (2012): 141–54; Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021); Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013); Anna M. Lawrence, ‘Listening to Plants: Conversations between Critical Plant Studies and Vegetal Geography’, Progress in Human Geography 46, no. 2 (2022): 629–51. ↩

V. Bachraz and W. Strahm, ‘Hyophorbe Amaricaulis: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2000: E.T38578A10125958’ (2000), https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2000.RLTS.T38578A10125958.en ↩

J. D. Bosenberg, ‘Encephalartos Woodii: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022: E.T41881A51057496’, 2022, https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2022-1.RLTS.T41881A51057496.en ↩

United Nations, ‘Report of the United Nations Conference on Human Environment: Stockholm, 5–16 June 1972’, 3. ↩

Chapter 9

Unless otherwise indicated, this account of the passenger pigeon draws primarily on the authoritative text available: A. W. Schorger, The Passenger Pigeon: Its Natural History and Extinction, reprint of 1st ed. (Caldwell, NJ: Blackburn Press, 2004), 14–53. For population estimates, see p. 205. ↩

The Society for Ecological Restoration International Science & Policy Working Group, ‘The SER International Primer on Ecological Restoration’ (2004), 3, https://www.ser-rrc.org/resource/the-ser-international-primer-on ↩

My aim here is not to promote one definition over another but to showcase the different meanings that de-extinction has been assigned by both scientists and other scholars. Within the literature, the varied uses have given rise to conflicting claims about the nature of de-extinction. A spirited account of these conflicts from the perspective of a de-extinction scientist can be found in Ben Novak, ‘De-Extinction’, Genes 9, no. 11 (2018): 548. ↩

John L. Allen, ‘From Cabot to Cartier: The Early Exploration of Eastern North America, 1497–1543’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (1992): 500–21; Jacques Cartier, The Voyages of Jacques Cartier, ed. by Ramsay Cook (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Peter Pope, ‘The Many Landfalls of John Cabot’, in The Many Landfalls of John Cabot (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1997). ↩

Schorger, Passenger Pigeon, 3–4. ↩

John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography, or an Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America; Accompanied by Descriptions of the Objects Represented in the Work Entitled the Birds of America, and Interspersed with Delineations of American Scenery and Manners, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Adam Black, 1831–9), 319–27. ↩

Alexander Wilson, American Ornithology; Or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States, vol. 3 (New York: Collins and Co., 1829), 1–11. ↩

Christopher Cokinos, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds (New York: J. P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000), 197. ↩

On harvesting feathers consult Schorger, Passenger Pigeon, 132; Audubon, Ornithological Biography, 1:325. ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts. ↩

Schorger, Passenger Pigeon, 155–6, 186; Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 98–9. ↩

Simon Pokagon, ‘The Wild Pigeon of North America’, The Chautauquan 22, no. 20 (1895): 202–6, at p. 204. ↩

Cokinos, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, 228–9, 244. ↩

Ruthven Deane, ‘The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) in Confinement’, The Auk 25, no. 2 (1908): 181–3. ↩

Schorger, Passenger Pigeon, 20–9; Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 124–6. ↩

Schorger, Passenger Pigeon, 28–9; Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts, 126–7; Cokinos, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, 264–71; Powell, Vanishing America. The couple were assassinated on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo. The precise route to war is debated, but, for an accessible survey, consult Christopher M. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London: Penguin, 2013). ↩

Robert Wilson Shufeldt, The Negro: A Menace to American Civilization (Boston, MA: Gorham Press, 1907); Robert Wilson Shufeldt, America’s Greatest Problem: The Negro (Philadelphia, PA: F. A. Davis, 1915). ↩

Schorger, Passenger Pigeon; R. W. Shufeldt, ‘Anatomical and Other Notes on the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) Lately Living in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens’, The Auk 32, no. 1 (1915): 29–41; R. W. Shufeldt, ‘Published Figures and Plates of the Extinct Passenger Pigeon’, The Scientific Monthly 12, no. 5 (1921): 458–81. ↩

Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine, eds, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). ↩

John Connelly, ‘Gypsies, Homosexuals, and Slavs’, in The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies, ed. John Roth and Peter Hayes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 274–90. ↩

Powell, Vanishing America. ↩

Dolly Jørgensen, Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging, History for a Sustainable Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019), 129–30. ↩

Ibid., 109–11; Schorger, Passenger Pigeon, 230. ↩

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949). ↩

The historian Dolly Jørgensen has provided the first account of extinction from the perspective of a history of emotions. In her fascinating analysis, overwhelming grief for the loss of the passenger pigeon underpins its memorialization and possible de-extinction. Consult Jørgensen, Recovering Lost Species, 89–117. ↩

The Long Now Foundation, ‘About Long Now’, The Long Now Foundation, n.d., https://longnow.org/about ↩

Revive and Restore was founded by Ryan Phelan, its current executive director, and Stewart Brand, and has functioned independently since 2017. Revive and Restore, ‘Report on the First De-Extinction Meeting and Other Revivalist News’, Long Now Blog (7 January 2013), https://blog.longnow.org/02013/01/07/report-on-the-first-de-extinction-meeting-and-other-revivalist-news; Revive & Restore, ‘About Us: Revive & Restore’, Revive & Restore, n.d., https://reviverestore.org/about-us ↩

The Dawn of De-Extinction. Are You Ready?, Ted Talks, 2013, https://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_the_dawn_of_de_extinction_are_you_ready; Revive & Restore, ‘TEDxDeExtinction | Revive & Restore’, Revive & Restore, n.d., https://reviverestore.org/events/tedxdeextinction. Accessed 21 October 2025. ↩

Jørgensen, Recovering Lost Species. ↩

M. R. O’Connor, Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2015), 177–206. ↩

Novak, ‘De-Extinction’. ↩

‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers–/That perches in the soul–/And sings the tune without the words–/And never stops–at all–.’ Emily Dickinson, ‘Poem 254’, c. 1861. ↩

Novak, ‘De-Extinction’, 5. ↩

Ernst Mayr, ‘What Is a Species, and What Is Not?’, Philosophy of Science 63, no. 2 (1996): 262–77; James Mallet, ‘A Species Definition for the Modern Synthesis’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution 10, no. 7 (1 July 1995): 294–9. ↩

Harrison B. Tordoff and Patrick T. Redig, ‘Role of Genetic Background in the Success of Reintroduced Peregrine Falcons’, Conservation Biology 15, no. 2 (2001): 528–32. ↩

Michael K. Phillips et al., ‘Grey Wolves – Yellowstone’, in The Biology and Conservation of Wild Canids, ed. David W. Macdonald and Claudio Sillero-Zubiri, Oxford Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 297–310; Dave Foreman, ‘The Wildlands Project and the Rewilding of North America’, Denver University Law Review 76 (1999): 535–53. ↩

For a detailed population report consult K. A. Cassidy et al., ‘Yellowstone National Park Wolf Project Annual Report 2022’ (USA: United States National Park Service, 2022), https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/wolf-reports.htm ↩

Foreman, ‘The Wildlands Project and the Rewilding of North America’. The article by Soulé and Noss was essentially a manifesto for the Wildlands Project. Consult Michael E. Soulé and Reed Noss, ‘Rewilding and Biodiversity: Complementary Goals for Continental Conservation’, Wild Earth 8 (1998): 19–26. On the history of the term ‘rewilding’ consult Dolly Jørgensen, ‘Rethinking Rewilding’, Geoforum 65 (2015): 482–8; Jamie Lorimer et al., ‘Rewilding: Science, Practice, and Politics’, Annual Review of Environment and Resources 40, no. 1 (2015): 39–62. Jørgensen notes the first use of the term was in 1991 in Wild Earth magazine. The earliest usage I have found is John Davis, ‘A Minority View’, Wild Earth 1, no. 4 (1991): 5–6. ↩

For European examples and discussions of the emotional connections consult Jørgensen, Recovering Lost Species; Dolly Jørgensen, ‘Reintroduction and De-extinction’, BioScience 63, no. 9 (2013): 719–20. ↩

Patrick Barkham, ‘Wanted: UK Bison Rangers, No Previous Experience Expected’, The Guardian (13 January 2021), http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/13/wildlife-rangers-in-uk-jobs-offer-no-bison-experience-required; Anonymous, ‘Wilder Blean’, Kent Wildlife Trust, n.d., https://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/wilderblean ↩

‘Rewilding Europe: Making Europe a Wilder Place’, Rewilding Europe, accessed 9 January 2021, https://rewildingeurope.com. ↩

Novak, ‘De-Extinction’. ↩

Frans W. M. Vera, ‘Large-Scale Nature Development – The Oostvaardersplassen’, British Wildlife, (June 2009): 28–36. ↩

Ibid. For more on the history and development of the OVP consult Bert Theunissen, ‘The Oostvaardersplassen Fiasco’, Isis 110 (2019): 341–5; Jamie Lorimer and Clemens Driessen, ‘Wild Experiments at the Oostvaardersplassen: Rethinking Environmentalism in the Anthropocene’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 39, no. 2 (2014): 169–81; Jamie Lorimer and C. P. G. Driessen, ‘Back-Breeding the Aurochs: The Heck Brothers, National Socialism and Imagined Geographies for Nonhuman Lebensraum’, in Hitler’s Geographies: The Spatialities of the Third Reich, ed. Paolo Giacarria and Claudio Minca (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 138–59; Jamie Lorimer and Clemens Driessen, ‘From “Nazi Cows” to Cosmopolitan “Ecological Engineers”: Specifying Rewilding Through a History of Heck Cattle’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106, no. 3 (2016): 631–52. ↩

Lorimer and Driessen, ‘From “Nazi Cows” to Cosmopolitan “Ecological Engineers”’; Lorimer and Driessen, ‘Back-Breeding the Aurochs’; Heinz Heck, ‘The Breeding-Back of the Aurochs’, Oryx 1, no. 3 (1951): 117–22; Heinz Heck, ‘The Breeding-Back of the Tarpan’, Oryx 1, no. 7 (1952): 338–42. ↩

Ronald Goderie, ‘The Tauros Programme: The Search for a New Icon for European Wilderness’, The Tauros Programme, n.d., https://taurosproject.com ↩

Russell Higuchi et al., ‘DNA Sequences from the Quagga, an Extinct Member of the Horse Family’, Nature 312, no. 5991 (1984): 284; J. A. Miller, ‘Gene Samples from an Extinct Animal Cloned’, Science News 125, no. 23 (1984): 356; Peter Heywood, ‘The Micro-Politics of Macromolecules in the Taxonomy and Restoration of Quaggas’, Kronos 41 (2021): 314–37. ↩

Heywood, ‘The Micro-Politics of Macromolecules in the Taxonomy and Restoration of Quaggas’. ↩

C. Polge, A. U. Smith, and A. S. Parkes, ‘Revival of Spermatozoa after Vitrification and Dehydration at Low Temperatures’, Nature 164, no. 4172 (1949): 666; Joanna Radin, Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 35–9. ↩

Ann Ewing, ‘Live Cells Frozen Alive’, The Science News-Letter 81, no. 16 (1962): 246–7. ↩

Kurt Benirschke, ‘The Frozen Zoo Concept’, Zoo Biology 3, no. 4 (1984): 325–8; Oliver A. Ryder et al., ‘DNA Banks for Endangered Animal Species’, Science 288, no. 5464 (2000): 275–7; Joanna Radin, ‘Planned Hindsight: The Vital Valuations of Frozen Tissue at the Zoo and the Natural History Museum’, Journal of Cultural Economy 8, no. 3 (2015): 361–78. ↩

Benirschke, ‘The Frozen Zoo Concept’; K. Benirschke and A. T. Kumamoto, ‘Mammalian Cytogenetics and Conservation of Species’, Journal of Heredity 82, no. 3 (1991): 187–91; Shawna Williams, ‘Conservation Biologist and Placenta Expert Kurt Benirschke Dies’, The Scientist Magazine, (14 September 2018), https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/conservation-biologist-and-placenta-expert-kurt-benirschke-dies-64809 ↩

Benirschke, ‘The Frozen Zoo Concept’, 326, 327. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Frozen Zoo®’, San Diego Zoo: Institute for Conservation Research, n.d., https://institute.sandiegozoo.org/resources/frozen-zoo%C2%AE ↩

Matthew Chrulew, ‘Freezing the Ark: The Cryopolitics of Endangered Species Preservation’, in Cryopolitics, ed. Joanna Radin and Emma Kowal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017), 283–305. The Frozen Ark’s website is available at https://www.frozenark.org, and the files registering it as a charity are available at https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/4025884, accessed 17 January 2021. ↩

J. Folch et al., ‘First Birth of an Animal from an Extinct Subspecies (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) by Cloning’, Theriogenology 71, no. 6 (2009): 1033. ↩

IUCN, ‘The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species’. ↩

The historian Joanna Radin suggests that new freezing techniques in the mid-twentieth century created a latent state of existence between life and death. Latency holds the potential for life grounded in the refusal to allow death. Radin, Life on Ice. On de-extinction consult Beth Alison Shapiro, How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 142–8; Novak, ‘De-Extinction’. ↩

There is already a substantial literature on de-extinction. Some of the best introductions to the concept, scientific research, and ethics include George M. Church and Edward Regis, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves (New York: Basic Books, 2012); Shapiro, How to Clone a Mammoth; Britt Wray, Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction (Vancouver, B.C.; Berkeley, CA: Greystone Books, 2017); Helen Pilcher, Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-Extinction (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). ↩

Shapiro, How to Clone a Mammoth, 109–40; Paul S. Martin and Anthony J. Stuart, ‘Mammoth Extinction: Two Continents and Wrangel Island’, Radiocarbon 37, no. 1 (1995): 7–10. ↩

Church and Regis, Regenesis; S. A. Zimov, ‘Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoth’s Ecosystem’, Science 308, no. 5723 (2005): 796–8. ↩

John Carey, ‘Rewilding’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 4 (26 January 2016): 806–8; Josh Donlan et al., ‘Re-Wilding North America’, Nature 436, no. 7053 (2005): 913–14; Josh Donlan et al., ‘Pleistocene Rewilding: An Optimistic Agenda for Twenty-First Century Conservation’, The American Naturalist 168, no. 5 (November 2006): 660–81; Paul S. Martin, Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007). ↩

Donlan et al., ‘Re-Wilding North America’, 913. ↩

Tim Caro, ‘The Pleistocene Re-Wilding Gambit’, Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22, no. 6 (June 2007): 281–3; Matthew Chrulew, ‘Reversing Extinction: Restoration and Resurrection in the Pleistocene Rewilding Projects’, Humanimalia 2, no. 2 (2011): 4–27; David Nogués-Bravo et al., ‘Rewilding Is the New Pandora’s Box in Conservation’, Current Biology 26, no. 3 (February 2016): R87–91. ↩

One of the few examples of such broader critiques is Chrulew, ‘Reversing Extinction’. Similar arguments have been made in discussions of the Anthropocene, for instance Donna Haraway, ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin’, Environmental Humanities 6, no. 1 (2015): 159–65; Janae Davis et al., ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene … Plantationocene?: A Manifesto for Ecological Justice in an Age of Global Crises’, Geography Compass 13, no. 5 (May 2019): e12438; James W. Moore, ‘Capitalocene & Planetary Justice’, Études digitales 9 (2021): 53–65. ↩

Keller and Turek, American Indians and National Parks; Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country; Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness. ↩

Shapiro, How to Clone a Mammoth; Novak, ‘De-Extinction’. ↩

Ibid. ↩

Lukas Rieppel, Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). ↩

Ibid.; Erika Lorraine Milam, Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019); Alexandra A. Chaidez and Aidan F. Ryan, ‘“I Profoundly Regret Harvard’s Past Association With Him”: Bacow Announces University Will Donate Unspent Epstein Gifts’, The Harvard Crimson (13 September 2019), https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/9/13/harvard-reviews-epstein-gifts; Jeffrey Mervis, ‘What Kind of Researcher Did Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Like to Fund? He Told Science Before He Died’, Science, AAAS (19 September 2019), https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/09/what-kind-researcher-did-sex-offender-jeffrey-epstein-fund-he-told-science-before-he-died; Adam Rogers, ‘How Rich Donors Like Epstein (and Others) Undermine Science’, Wired (15 September 2019), https://www.wired.com/story/the-problem-with-rich-people-funding-science; Sharon Begley, ‘Biologist George Church Apologizes for Contacts with Jeffrey Epstein’, STAT (5 August 2019), https://www.statnews.com/2019/08/05/citing-nerd-tunnel-vision-biologist-george-church-apologizes-for-contacts-with-jeffrey-epstein ↩

Damian Carrington, ‘Meatball from Long-Extinct Mammoth Created by Food Firm’, The Guardian (28 March 2023), sec. Environment, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/28/meatball-mammoth-created-cultivated-meat-firm; Smithsonian Magazine and Alex Chun, ‘This Massive Meatball Was Made With Woolly Mammoth DNA’, Smithsonian Magazine (30 March 2023), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-massive-meatball-was-made-with-woolly-mammoth-dna-180981908 ↩

Novak, ‘De-Extinction’. ↩

Chapter 10

On the refurbishment of Hintze Hall, consult Pandora Syperek et al., ‘Curating Ocean Ecology at the Natural History Museum: Miranda Lowe and Richard Sabin in Conversation with Pandora Syperek and Sarah Wade’, Science Museum Group Journal 13, no. 13 (2020). ↩

You can visit Hintze Hall virtually at https://tinyurl.com/y5gzvag8 and listen to David Attenborough discussing these specimens via the museum’s SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/nhmlondon/sets/hintze-hall ↩

John Ray, ‘An Account of the Dissection of a Porpess’, Philosophical Transactions (1665–1678) 6 (1671): 2274–9; Londa Schiebinger, ‘Why Mammals are Called Mammals: Gender Politics in Eighteenth-Century Natural History’, American Historical Review 98 (1993): 382–411; Philip D. Gingerich, ‘Evolution of Whales from Land to Sea’, in Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution, ed. Kenneth P. Dial, Neil Shubin, and Elizabeth L. Brainerd (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 239–56. ↩

The wolf-sized, semi-aquatic ancestor is formally called Pakicetus and was first named in the 1980s. Its descendants included the semi-aquatic Maiacetus and the fully aquatic Dorudon from which modern baleen and toothed whales descend. Unfortunately, while I’m thrilled that whales descend from my ancestral homeland, their ancestor’s name also brings to mind awful racial slurs, so I have not used the name here. For the evolution and naming of cetaceans, consult Philip D. Gingerich et al., ‘Origin of Whales in Epicontinental Remnant Seas: New Evidence from the Early Eocene of Pakistan’, Science 220, no. 4595 (1983): 403–6; Annalisa Berta, ‘What Is a Whale?’, Science 263, no. 5144 (1994): 180–1; J. G. M. Thewissen et al., ‘Whales Originated from Aquatic Artiodactyls in the Eocene Epoch of India’, Nature 450, no. 7173 (December 2007): 1190–4; Philip D. Gingerich, ‘Evolution of Whales from Land to Sea’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 156, no. 3 (2012): 309–23; Gingerich, ‘Evolution of Whales from Land to Sea’ (2015); Jonathan H. Geisler, ‘Whale Evolution: Dispersal by Paddle or Fluke’, Current Biology 29 (2019): R280–99; Michael R. McGowen et al., ‘Phylogenomic Resolution of the Cetacean Tree of Life Using Target Sequence Capture’, ed. Hernam López-Fernández, Systematic Biology 69, no. 3 (2020): 479–501. Gingerich’s articles are particularly important as they clearly recognize the contributions of his collaborators in the global South, particularly Pakistan and Egypt. For instance, he notes that the type specimen of Maiacetus inuus was found by Iyad Zalmout. Such participation and co-discoveries are routinely erased in the history of science more broadly. ↩

Gingerich, ‘Evolution of Whales from Land to Sea’ (2012); Gingerich, ‘Evolution of Whales from Land to Sea’ (2015). ↩

D. Graham Burnett, The Sounding of the Whale: Science & Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2012). ↩

Stephen J. Trumble et al., ‘Baleen Whale Cortisol Levels Reveal a Physiological Response to 20th Century Whaling’, Nature 9, no. 1 (2018): 1–8. Cortisol levels were at their lowest between 1970 and 1999, coinciding with increased protections, including the global moratorium on whaling of 1986. ↩

Hal Whitehead, Tim D. Smith, and Luke Rendell, ‘Adaptation of Sperm Whales to Open-Boat Whalers: Rapid Social Learning on a Large Scale?’, Biology Letters 17, no. 3 (2021): rsbl.2021.0030, 20210030. For historians reporting whalers’ accounts consult Bathsheba Demuth, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2019); Ryan Tucker Jones, ‘A Whale of a Difference: Southern Right Whale Culture and the Tasman World’s Living Terrain of Encounter’, Environment and History 25 (2019): 185–218. ↩

Unless otherwise cited, all discussion of Owen’s career draws from Rupke, Richard Owen. ↩

Carla Yanni, Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), 111–15. ↩

Richard Owen, ‘Presidential Address’, Report of the Fifty-First Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at York in August and September 1881 51 (1882): 656. ↩

Richard Owen, On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History (London: Saunders, Otley, & Co, 1862), 75, 99. ↩

Unless otherwise indicated, this history of the Natural History Museum draws from F. W. Sheppard, ed., Survey of London: Volume 38, South Kensington Museums Area, 47 vols (London: London County Council, 1975), http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol38; Yanni, Nature’s Museums; William T. Stearn, The Natural History Museum in South Kensington: A History of the British Museum (Natural History) 1753–1980 (London: Heinemann, 1981); Mark Girouard, Alfred Waterhouse and the Natural History Museum (London: Natural History Museum, 1981). ↩

Owen, Extent and Aims of a National Museum, 11. ↩

Yanni, Nature’s Museums, 117–26. ↩

‘The Natural History Museum’, Saturday Review (23 April 1881), 517–18. ↩

Owen, ‘Presidential Address’, 658. ↩

Unless otherwise indicated, this account of Sloane’s collecting draws from James Delbourgo, Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (London: Allen Lane, 2017). ↩

Ibid., 49–53, 78. ↩

Ibid., 67. ↩

Ibid., 34–9, 55–7, 132. ↩

On the centenary of the Natural History Museum’s opening, Stearn’s official account does not reflect on the importance of Sloane’s trip to Jamaica or his widow’s wealth. Consult Stearn, The Natural History Museum in South Kensington, 3–8, at 5. ↩

On Sloane’s death, his executors recorded 756 human remains catalogued as ‘Humana’. Delbourgo, Collecting the World, 260. ↩

Ibid., 40–4. ↩

Hilary M. Beckles, ‘The Caribbean and Britain’, in The Origins of Empire, ed. Nicholas P. Canny, vol. 1, 5 vols, The Oxford history of the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 218–40. For more on the crucial links between the Caribbean and British Isles, consult Christienna Fryar’s forthcoming book Entangled Lands, in press with Allen Lane. ↩

Delbourgo, Collecting the World, 185–92. ↩

Ibid., 156–62. ↩

Ibid., 260. ↩

Yanni, Nature’s Museums, 21. ↩

Owen, Extent and Aims of A National Museum, 126. ↩

Ibid., 7. ↩

Genesis 1:21 (King James Version). ↩

Owen, 14–15. In Owen’s language, a Great Whalebone whale of the ‘Mysticete’. ↩

Ibid., 18–19. ↩

Clive N. Trueman et al., ‘Combining Simulation Modeling and Stable Isotope Analyses to Reconstruct the Last Known Movements of One of Nature’s Giants’, PeerJ 7 (2019): e7912; Christopher W. Clark and Ellen C. Garland, eds, Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Mysticetes, Ethology and Behavioral Ecology of Marine Mammals (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2022). ↩

This account of Hope’s acquisition and early display draws on Richard Sabin and Lorraine Cornish, Hope: The Story of the Blue Whale (London: Natural History Museum, 2019), 8–17. ↩

‘A Huge Whale Killed on the Wexford Coast’, Belfast News-Letter (30 March 1891): 6. ↩

Ibid. ↩

Flower served as Director, and Owen’s successor, from 1888. On Flower’s Directorship consult Stearn, The Natural History Museum in South Kensington, 67–77. ↩

F. C. Fraser, ‘The Blue Whale Skeleton in the Whale Hall’, Natural History Magazine 4 (1934): 229. ↩

J. Wilson, ‘The Wexford Whale’, Standard (4 April 1891): 2. For estimated contemporary values consult the National Archives Currency Converter, 1270–2017, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#, accessed 13 October 2020. ↩

‘View of the Central Hall (1888)’, British Museum and [Flower, W. H.], A General Guide to the British Museum (Natural History) (London: British Museum, 1887), 13, 22–34. ↩

W. H. Flower, ‘On Whales, Past and Present, and Their Probable Origin I’, Nature 28, no. 713 (1883): 200. ↩

W. H. Flower, ‘On Whales, Past and Present, and Their Probable Origin II’, Nature 28, no. 714 (1883): 229. Flower also gave these papers as a lecture at the Royal Institution in 1883, which was reprinted as William Henry Flower, On Whales, Past and Present and Their Probable Origin. A Discourse (London: [n.p.], 1883). ↩

Barrow, Nature’s Ghosts. ↩

R. Deaville et al., ‘Annual Report for the Period 1st January–31 De-cember 2018 (Contract Number ME6008)’ (London: UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, 2018); Anna Turns, ‘A Rare Glimpse Inside Britain’s Secret Vault of Whale Skeletons’, Guardian (21 January 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/21/natural-history-museum-vault-whale-skeletons-cetacean-collection ↩

Burnett, The Sounding of the Whale, 109–34. ↩

Ibid., 150–1. ↩

Ibid., 178. ↩

Sabin and Cornish, Hope, 23, 36; Fraser, ‘The Blue Whale Skeleton in the Whale Hall’; G. F. Herbert Smith, ‘Note on the Method of Suspension’, Natural History Magazine 4 (1934): 230–2. ↩

Sabin and Cornish, Hope. ↩

‘New Home for Whales’, Nottingham Evening Post (3 January 1934): 8. Also consult ‘91 Feet Model Whale’, Evening Telegraph (24 December 1938): 8. ↩

‘Rare Whale for Exhibition’, Gloucestershire Echo (19 August 1938): 6. ↩

‘The “Ghost” Of a Whale On View’, Gloucester Citizen (7 June 1937), 8, and Stearn, The Natural History Museum in South Kensington, 131–2. ↩

Michael Rossi, ‘Fabricating Authenticity: Modeling a Whale at the American Museum of Natural History, 1906–1974’, Isis 101, no. 2 (June 2010): 338–61. ↩

International Whaling Commission, ‘International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling’ (1946), 1, https://archive.iwc.int/?r=3607; Ray Gambell, ‘International Management of Whales and Whaling: An Historical Review of the Regulation of Commercial and Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling’, Arctic 46 (1993): 97–107; Burnett, The Sounding of the Whale, 341–409. ↩

Burnett, The Sounding of the Whale, 328. ↩

John C. Lilly, Man and Dolphin: Adventures of a New Scientific Frontier (New York: Pyramid Books, 1961), 7. ↩

Burnett, The Sounding of the Whale. ↩

Roger S. Payne and Scott McVay, ‘Songs of Humpback Whales’, Science 173 (1971): 585. ↩

Ibid., 590. ↩

Burnett, The Sounding of the Whale, 628–9. ↩

Ibid.; Frank S. Zelko, Make It a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). ↩

Zelko, Make It a Green Peace! ↩

Ibid. ↩

Hunter’s testimony cited in Ibid., 217. ↩

International Whaling Commission, ‘Total Catches Since the Moratorium Came into Place in 1985’, International Whaling Commission (2021), https://iwc.int/management-and-conservation/whaling/total-catches ↩

Dippy was donated by Andrew Carnegie in 1905. The original specimen stands in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History while replicas occupy museums in Berlin, Bologna, Madrid, Mexico City, Munich, La Plata, Paris, and Vienna. Rieppel, Assembling the Dinosaur, 73–109. ↩

Arianna Bernucci, Lorraine Cornish, and Cheryl Lynn, ‘Blue Whale on the Move: Dismantling a 125-Year-Old Specimen’, in Green Museum: How to Practice What We Preach? 2016 SPNHC Conference, 31st Annual Meeting, June 20–25, 2016, Berlin, Germany (2016); Anonymous, ‘Natural History Museum Receives £5m Donation’, BBC News (8 May 2014), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-27319973 ↩

On the history of this specimen consult Albert Koch, Description of Missourium, or Missouri Leviathan: Together with Its Supposed Habits and Indian Traditions Concerning the Location from Whence It Was Exhumed; Also, Comparisons of the Whale, Crocodile and Missourium with the Leviathan, as Described in 41st Chapter of the Book of Job, And a Catalogue of the Whole Fossil Collection (London: E. Fisher, 1841); Richard Owen, ‘Report on the Missourium Now Exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall, with an Inquiry into the Claims of the Tetracaudodon to Generic Distinction’, Proceedings of the Geological Society of London 3 (1842): 689–95; P. R. Hoy, ‘Dr. Koch’s Missourium’, The American Naturalist 5 (1871): 147–8; James D. Dana, ‘On Dr Koch’s Evidence With Regard To the Contemporaneity of Man and the Mastodon In Missouri’, American Journal of Science and Arts 9 (1875): 335–46; William Lindsay, ‘“Mammoth” Task’, Curator: The Museum Journal 34, no. 4 (1991): 261–72. ↩

Koch, Description of Missourium, or Missouri Leviathan, 14. ↩

NHM Catalogue number PV OR 15913, https://data.nhm.ac.uk/object/27776c58-61a8-4d27-9771-8091d3d03c60, and Owen, ‘Report on the Missourium Now Exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall, with an Inquiry into the Claims of the Tetracaudodon to Generic Distinction’; R. McMillan, ‘The Discovery of Fossil Vertebrates on Missouri’s Western Frontier’, Earth Sciences History 29, no. 1 (2010): 26–51. ↩

Lindsay, ‘“Mammoth” Task’; Lu Allington-Jones, ‘Mastodon and On and On … a Moving Story’, Journal of Natural Science Collections 5 (2018): 110–14. ↩

Reginald Walter Hooley, ‘On the Skeleton of Iguanodon atherfieldensis sp. nov., from the Wealden Shales of Atherfield (Isle of Wight)’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 81 (1925): 1–61; Mantell, ‘Discovery of the Bones of the Iguanodon in a Quarry of Kentish Rag (a Limestone Belonging to the Later Greensand Formation) Near Maidstone, Kent’; Mantell, On the Structure of the Iguanodon, and on the Fauna and Flora of the Wealden Formation; Dean, Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs, 52–85. ↩

Hooley, ‘On the Skeleton of Iguanodon atherfieldensis’, 1. ↩

Gregory S. Paul, ‘A Revised Taxonomy of the Iguanodont Dinosaur Genera and Species’, Cretaceous Research 29, no. 2 (April 2008): 192. ↩

Carlos Roberto Fonseca, ‘The Silent Mass Extinction of Insect Herbivores in Biodiversity Hotspots’, Conservation Biology 23, no. 6 (2009): 1507–15; Simon R. Leather, Yves Basset, and Bradford A. Hawkins, ‘Insect Conservation: Finding the Way Forward’, Insect Conservation and Diversity 1, no. 1 (February 2008): 67–9. ↩

Kerry Lotzof, ‘Highlighting Coral Reefs at Risk’, Natural History Museum (London), n.d., https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/highlighting-coral-reefs-at-risk.html; Syperek et al., ‘Curating Ocean Ecology at the Natural History Museum’. ↩

On imperial hunting and its connections to both extinction and conservation consult Prendergast and Adams, ‘Colonial Wildlife Conservation and the Origins of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire (1903–1914)’; MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature. ↩

Anonymous, ‘Cecil the Lion: Zimbabwe Hunter Bailed Over Killing’, BBC News (29 July 2015), sec. Africa, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33699346 ↩

Kerry Lotzof, ‘The Heavy Metal Rock Bands Charting Life on Early Earth’, Natural History Museum (London), n.d., https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-heavy-metal-rock-bands-charting-life-on-early-earth.html ↩

Bruce Harvey and Simon Nish, ‘Rio Tinto and Indigenous Community Agreement Making in Australia’, Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law 23, no. 4 (2005): 499–510; Thomas F. King, ‘Rio Tinto Talks the Talk’, The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice 3, no. 2 (October 2012): 166–9; Rio Tinto, ‘Why Cultural Heritage Matters’, n.d., 132; Anonymous, ‘Rio Tinto: Church of England Condemns Aboriginal Destruction’, BBC News (9 September 2020), sec. Business, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54075614 ↩

John Ruskin, ‘A Museum or Picture Gallery: Its Functions and Its Formation’, The Art Journal (1875–1887) 6 (1880): 215–17; Amy Woodson-Boulton, Transformative Beauty: Art Museums in Industrial Britain (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). ↩

The relevant literature is vast, but the following provide helpful context: Donna Haraway, ‘Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908–1936’, Social Text (1984), 20–64; Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Studies on the History of Society and Culture 20 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994); Conklin, In the Museum of Man; Sarah Longair and John McAleer, eds, Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience, Studies in Imperialism (Museums, material culture and the British Empire) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016); Delbourgo, Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum; Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (London: Pluto Press, 2020); Adam Kuper, The Museum of Other People (London: Profile Books, 2024). ↩

Rieppel, Assembling the Dinosaur. ↩

Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (New York: Doubleday, 2021); Katayoun Shafiee, Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018); Esther Addley, ‘British Museum Ends BP Sponsorship Deal after 27 Years’, The Guardian (2 June 2023), sec. Culture, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jun/02/british-museum-ends-bp-sponsorship-deal-after-27-years ↩

Martha Busby, ‘Extinction Rebellion Activists Stage Die-in Protests Across Globe’, The Guardian (27 April 2019), sec. Environment, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/27/extinction-rebellion-activists-stage-die-in-protests-across-globe; Jen Mills, ‘Extinction Rebellion Stage Mass “Die-in” at Natural History Museum’, Metro (22 April 2019), sec. News, https://metro.co.uk/2019/04/22/extinction-rebellion-stage-mass-die-in-natural-history-museum-9286098; James Morris, ‘XR Activists Hold Dramatic “Die-in” at Natural History Museum’, Evening Standard (23 April 2019), sec. News, https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/hundreds-of-extinction-rebellion-protesters-stage-dramatic-diein-at-london-s-natural-history-museum-a4123166.html ↩

Epilogue

Peter H. Raven and Scott E. Miller, ‘Here Today, Gone Tomorrow’, Science 370, no. 6513 (2020): 149; Kemp, The Lost Species. ↩

David Gange, The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to the Channel (London: William Collins, 2020). ↩

The swapped legs are noted in Hein van Grouw, ‘The Spotted Green Pigeon Caloenas Maculata: As Dead as a Dodo, but What Else Do We Know About It?’, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 134, no. 4 (2014): 291–301. ↩

On Latham, consult Yolanda Foote, ‘Latham, John (1740–1837), Naturalist’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); John Latham, A General Synopsis of Birds, vol. 2, 3 vols (London: Leigh & Sotheby, 1783), https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.62572; John Latham, A General History of Birds, vol. 8, 10 vols (Winchester: Jacob and Johnson, 1823). ↩

Latham, A General Synopsis of Birds, 2.2:642. ↩

Cited in van Grouw, ‘The Spotted Green Pigeon Caloenas Maculata’, 292. Stanley’s copy of Latham is in the collections of the World Museum, Liverpool. ↩

H. Forbes, ‘On the Type of the Spotted Green Pigeon of Latham, in the Derby Museum’, Bulletin of the Liverpool Museums 1 (1898): 83. On historical disagreement about the bird’s classification consult van Grouw, ‘The Spotted Green Pigeon Caloenas Maculata’. ↩

Tim H. Heupink, Hein van Grouw, and David M. Lambert, ‘The Mysterious Spotted Green Pigeon and Its Relation to the Dodo and Its Kindred’, BMC Evolutionary Biology 14, no. 1 (2014): 1–7; van Grouw, ‘The Spotted Green Pigeon Caloenas Maculata’. ↩

Teuira Henry, Ancient Tahiti (Honolulu, HI: Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, 1928), 386. Also cited and discussed at length in Philippe Raust, ‘On the Possible Vernacular Name and Origin of the Extinct Spotted Green Pigeon Caloenas Maculata’, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 140, no. 1 (2020): 3–6. ↩

Raust, ‘On the Possible Vernacular Name and Origin of the Extinct Spotted Green Pigeon Caloenas Maculata’. ↩

J. Goodrich et al., ‘Panthera Tigris. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022: E.T15955A214862019’, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (15 December 2021). ↩

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Edinburgh, Scotland: National Library of Scotland

Papers of Daisy Bates, John Murray Archive, Acc.13451

Gland, Switzerland

IUCN Archives

Canberra, Australia: National Library of Australia

Daisy Bates Papers, MS365

Bates Letters to Lang, MS2300

Bates Letters to Mathews, MS3197

Bates Memorial, NK7469

Elizabeth Salter Papers, MS6481

Ernestine Hill Papers, MS8392

Hurst Papers, MS7987

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John Peyton Jr and Thomas Peyton, MG323

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Index

The page references in this index correspond to the print edition from which this ebook was created, and clicking on them will take you to the location in the ebook where the equivalent print page would begin. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

Page references in italics indicate images.

Abbeville, France, fragment of human jawbone discovered at 93

Aboriginal peoples

Aboriginal Progressive Association 133

Aborigines Act (1905) 132

Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) 74

Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society 74

assimilation of 64, 65–6, 119, 132

Australia, Aboriginal peoples of 74–9, 99, 105, 112, 113–14, 115–40, 121, 130, 155, 156, 261 see also Australia

Australian Aborigines’ League 133

Bates and see Bates, Daisy

Beothuk see Beothuk

‘Black war’ against 117–18

bodies desecrated 138

Cambridge Anthropological Expedition and 123–5

cannibalism and 132–4, 139

child removal policies 132

Christianity, mission stations for conversion to 132

civil rights of 132, 133, 136–7

Confederation of Aboriginal People of Canada 54

Europeans and Southeast Asians, first encounters with 114

European assumptions about empty lands underpin rapid dispossession of 117

extinction of 119, 126–31, 130

frontier massacre project, Lyndall Ryan 118

‘Hair of Extinct Tasmanian Aboriginal’ 130, 130

language groups 114

as living fossils from the Stone Age 99

Mabo v Queensland (no. 2) 136–7

Malcolmson and 122–3

Native Americans see Native Americans

Native Title Act (1993) 136–7

Native Union of Western Australia 132

Newfoundland/Canadian see Beothuk

Noongar people land-rights claim 138–9

parliamentary reports on 74–5, 118–19

paternalistic humanitarian protection, policy shift from neglecting frontier violence to establishing 119

Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (1837) 74–5

South West Native Title Settlement 139

Tasmanians, Aboriginal xx, 57, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 105, 117, 118, 129–30, 130, 156, 272

The Times reports mistreatment of 122–3

Académie des Sciences, Paris 6

Académie Royale des Sciences, Paris 6

Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia 23

Africa 54, 75, 81, 117, 119, 148, 152, 154, 213, 228, 232, 233, 241, 261, 273

continental drift and 200, 201

Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa (London Convention) (1900) 150, 151

elephant and 3, 10, 11

enslaved Africans xix, 31, 62, 122, 246, 247, 265

humanity’s origins in 76, 89, 91, 97, 99, 107, 108–11, 114

national parks in 73, 188

See also individual nation name

Agar, Jon 159

Agassiz, Louis 76

Agathis conifers 195–6, 197

agriculture 60, 71, 102, 132, 186, 204, 211, 226, 226

Albemarle, Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of 246

Aleutian Islands 143–4, 256

Allen, Glover M.: Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere with the Marine Species of All the Oceans 152–3

Allen, Jan 194–6

Allen, Joel Asaph 148–9

Alvarez, Luis 179, 180–82, 184

Alvarez, Walter 179

American Breeders Service 229

American Committee for International Wild Life Protection (ACIWLP) 151–2, 158

American Museum of Natural History, New York 253

American Revolutionary War (1775–83) 60–61

‘American School’ (promoting extinction as a process ‘predestined by nature’) 76

Americas 3, 10, 15, 241

Colombian exchange, violence visited upon Native nations in 186, 273

environmental impact of Europeans arriving in 84, 166, 186

peopling of 36–8

See also individual nation name

Amsterdam Zoo 228

Andaman Islands 100, 105, 112, 124

ancestry testing, commercial 52–6, 111

Anglo-Persian Oil Company 263

Angolan giraffe 158

Anishinaabe 68

Anning, Joseph 23

Anning, Mary (daughter of Richard Anning) 23, 24, 26

Anning, Mary (wife of Richard Anning) 23

Anning, Richard 23

Antediluvian Child 86, 87, 88, 92

Anthropocene 185–6, 236–7

Anthropocene Working Group 185–6

Anthropological Institute 48

Anthropological Review 102, 105–6

Anthropological Society of London 77

Anthropomorpha 89–90, 90

Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society 74

Anti-Slavery International 74

Apollo Belvedere 98

Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, US 166

Araucaria conifers 195, 197

Araucariaceae conifer family 194–5, 197

Archaeopteryx (bird-like dinosaur) 173

Archean Eon 176, 201

Aristotle 240–41

Arkwright, Richard 147

Arnhem Land reserve, Australia 131–2

artificial selection 215

Asaro, Frank 179–80

Ashmole, Elias xiv

Ashmolean Museum xiv, 22

‘Assessing Extinction Threats’ (Mace and Lande) 161–2

assimilation, Native peoples and 60, 64, 65–6, 119, 132

Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger 136

atomic bomb 183–5

Audubon, John James: The Birds of America 216–17

auroch 109, 226–8, 236

Australia xxii

Aboriginal peoples see Aboriginal peoples

European’s arrival in 14–15, 34, 75, 114–19, 116

Great Barrier Reef 260

Greater Blue Mountains Area 193–4

national parks 73

origins of/New Holland 14–15, 34, 75, 114–19, 116

Threatened Species Day 156

thylacine in 155, 156

Wollemi pine and 193–4, 195, 197, 201, 207–8

Australian Aborigines’ League 133

Australopithecus africanus 108

Aylward, Chris 51

back-breeding 215, 227

Baiji, or Yangtze dolphin 273

baleen whales (Mysticeti) 240–43, 250, 253–4

banded-iron formation 240, 258, 261

Banks, Joseph 115, 116, 204, 206, 267, 268, 270

Bannerman Park, St John’s, Newfoundland 58

Barbados 247, 248

Barton, Benjamin Smith 21

Bates, Arnold Hamilton 120

Bates, Daisy 113–40, 121, 127

Aboriginal activists dispute beliefs of 133

Aboriginal languages, learns 120, 134

Aboriginal peoples as an ‘anachronism’, views 130–31

archives/papers as resource for reclaiming Aboriginal rights 135–9

birth 119, 129

Cambridge Anthropological Expedition in Australia and 123–5

cannibalism claims 132–4, 139

coercive measures to discipline informants or extract information 126

Commander of the British Empire (CBE) 113–14

controversial, writings remain 139–40

death 134

Digital Daisy Bates website 135

fame 113–14

Fanny Balbuk Yooreel and 137

‘Great White Queen of the Never Never’ 113

Harris publicly rebukes 132–3

intensive fieldwork 120

‘Kabbarli’, or grandmother, asserts that Aboriginal peoples regarded her as 125

legacy 134–40

Malcolmson and 122–3

marriages 119–20

‘Mrs Daisy Bates at her desk in Adelaide, South Australia’ (Darian D. Smith) 127

name 119

personal diaries 134

self-reliance and regard for own research 123

Stead trains as a journalist and hires as a writer 120

southern Australia, moves to 120

Tasmania, visits 129–30

The Native Tribes of Western Australia 122, 139

The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent Among the Natives of Australia 113, 126–8, 127, 133–4, 139

Western Australia, travels across 120, 121, 122, 123, 135, 138, 139

Bates, Jack 119–20

Báxoje 68–9

Beagle, HMS 171–2

beaver, European 223–4, 225

Bendyshe, Thomas: ‘On the Extinction of Races’ 78

Benirschke, Kurt 229

Benjamin the Thylacine xxi, 155–6, 155

Beothuk xx, 35–59, 75, 81, 131, 146

Beothuk Institution 45

Beothuk Interpretation Centre 58

Demasduit (Mary March) 41–5, 47, 51–3, 55, 56–7, 58, 59

European settler barbarity and 38–9

Europeans first encounter 37–8

extinction of 47–59, 50, 75

land dispossession 40–41

migration 51–4

name 37

Nonosabasut 41, 43, 45, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56–7, 59

Santu Toney 49–50, 50, 59

Shanawdithit (Nancy or Nancy April) 41–8, 46, 58–9, 81

The Beothuk Story (documentary) 51

Bering Strait 143–4, 231, 232

Bering, Vitus Jonassen 143, 144

Beringia 36

Berlin Zoo 227

Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, USA 3, 20

biodiversity xx, 162–3, 177, 186–91, 193, 224–5, 233, 274

Biodiversity Conference, or COP 15 (2022) 188, 273–4

Global Biodiversity Framework (‘30 by 30’) 188–90, 191, 274

International Year of Biodiversity (2010) 163

bison 20, 72, 107, 109, 145, 148–50, 154, 168, 219, 224, 225, 227, 232, 241, 251

Black List 160

Blackhawk, Ned: The Rediscovery of America 61–2

Bland, John 40–41

Blean Woods, Kent 225

blue whale xvii, 239, 239, 242, 243–4, 249, 250, 251–4, 257

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich 78, 90

Boas, Franz 48–9

Boehm, Mannfred xvii

Bohlen, Jim 256

Bolson tortoise 232

Bonaparte, Napoleon 6–7, 101

Book of Job 16, 258

botanical gardens 194, 202–6

bottlenose dolphin 254–5

Boule, Marcellin 107, 109

Bowthorpe Oak, Lincolnshire 192

Boyle, Charles Leofrick 158; Animals and Plants Threatened with Extinction 158

Boyle, Robert 246

Brand, Stewart 221–2

bristlecone pine Methuselah 192

British Association for the Advancement of Science 95, 124, 246

British Isles, Roman invasions of 91, 92, 98

British Museum 7, 23, 28–9, 31, 103, 245–6, 248–9, 261, 262–3

British Petroleum (BP) 262–3

British Society for the Preservation of Wild Fauna of the Empire 150–51

Brixham Cave, Devon 94–5, 106

Broca, Paul 106

Bronze Age 93, 103, 104, 106

Bru, Juan-Bautista 11

Buchan, Lieutenant David 42, 43–4, 45

Buckland, Reverend William 21, 22, 22, 23, 26, 29, 86, 92

bucardo (Pyrenean ibex) 230

Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de 4–5, 18; Natural History (Histoire Naturelle) 7–8, 9

bunya-pine 195

Bureau of Forest Research 198

Burnett, Graham: The Sounding of the Whale 242, 252

Busk, George 52, 97–8, 99, 101

Buxton, Thomas Fowell 74

cabinets of curiosities 261

Cabot, John 37, 38

Cabot, Sebastian 38

Cadotte, Alexander 68

Caesar, Julius 91

Cambridge Anthropological Expedition in Australia 123–5

Camper, Petrus 98

Campo Grande Treefrog of Brazil xviii

Canada 11, 34, 35, 54, 56–7, 66, 73, 75, 85, 137, 166, 167, 188, 189, 216, 232

Canadian Museum of History, Ottawa 57

cannibalism 80, 132–4, 139

Cape of Good Hope 10, 117, 171, 245

Caribbean monk seal 154, 155, 168

Carlisle Institute, Pennsylvania 66

Carolina parakeet 220

Carroll, Lewis: Alice in Wonderland 146–7

Cartier, Jacques 215–16

Cartwright, George: ‘The Case of the Wild or Red Indians of Newfoundland with a Plan for their relief ’ 39

Cartwright, John 39

Catlin, George 67–70, 83–4, 86

‘Indian Gallery’ 68–9

Picturesque Bluffs above Prairie du Chien 70

Cave, Alexander 109

Cecil the lion 261

Center for the Reproduction of Endangered Species 229

Chambers, Carrick 197

Chambers, Robert: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation 96

Chan Wang 198

Chaney, Ralph W. 199

Chinese Shuishan Preservation Committee 199

Ching-Tsan Hwa 199

Christol, Jules de 92–3

Church, George 231

civil rights 132, 133, 136

Clarke Bagelhole, Ernest 119–20

Claudius, Emperor 91

climate change xvii, xxi, 4, 18, 28, 156, 184, 193, 207, 211, 232, 234, 260, 273

coelacanth fish 200, 260

Cold War (1946–91) xx, xxiii, 183, 185, 213, 254

Colenso, William 203

Colonial Office, British 39, 251–2

colonized peoples, extinction of xx, 34, 35–83

Aboriginal peoples see Aboriginal peoples

‘American School’ (promoting extinction as a process ‘predestined by nature’) 76

ancestry testing and 52–6, 111

animal extinction, ideas about extended to xxi, xxii, 75–85, 111–12

assimilation and 60, 64, 65–6, 119, 132

Beothuk see Beothuk

‘doomed races’, natural extinction of xxii, 59, 61, 76–7, 80, 84, 114, 129, 135

enslavement and see enslavement

extermination and extinction, slippage between and 74–8, 80–84

First Nations 53, 57, 59, 189, 272

genocide and 81–5

Native Americans see Native Americans

natural law, notion of extinction as a providential of and xix–xx, xxii, 34, 59, 61, 76–81, 84, 114, 129, 135

‘philanthropy’ and 75

repatriation and reparation 56–8

reservation system and 61, 64, 65, 67, 73, 83, 149, 150

survivance 57

comparative anatomy 10, 12, 15, 19, 33, 97

‘Condition of the Natives’, Royal Commission and report (1905) 123

Confederation of Aboriginal People of Canada 54

conservation biology xviii, xx, 187, 224–5

continental drift 200–201

Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa (London Convention) (1900) 150–51

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) 81, 82

Conybeare, William D. 23

Cook pine 195

Cook, Captain James 115, 195, 204

Coolidge, Harold, or ‘Hal’, J. 151, 155, 158; ‘Emergency Action for the Preservation of Vanishing Species’ 153

Cooper, William 133

coppicing 196

coral reefs 240, 259, 260

Cormack, William Epps 45–7, 51–2

correlation of forms 12

Cosmos (television science series) 184

Côté, Louis 54

Creation, Biblical accounts of 21–2, 88–91, 96, 249

Cretaceous Period 170–71, 178, 179

critically endangered 136, 164, 202, 213, 257

Cronk, Quentin xvii

Crutzen, Paul 185, 186

Crystal Palace, Sydenham 31–3, 31

Crystal Palace Company 32

Curepipe Botanic Gardens, Mauritius 212–13

Curie, Marie and Pierre 200

Cuvier, Georges 9–20, 21, 26, 29, 33, 34, 88, 93, 171, 177

Dalniy Vostok 256–7

Dampier, William: A New Voyage Around the World 115

dark extinctions xvii

Darwin, Charles 99, 104, 171–3, 208, 219, 245, 272

On the Origin of Species 79, 95–7

The Descent of Man 80–81, 97

Davies, General Major 268–9

Dawes, Senator Henry 65, 71

Dawkins, William Boyd 106, 112

‘The Dawn of De-Extinction. Are you ready?’ TED talk 221–2

Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) (shuishan) 198–200

Dawson, Gowan 29

DDT 223

De La Beche, Henry 23; Duria antiquior 27, 27

de-extinction 214–37, 222

deep time 27, 144

Delbourgo, James 247–8

Demasduit (Mary March) 41, 42–5, 47, 51–3, 55, 56–7, 58, 59

Derby, Lord Stanley, Earl of 268, 269

Devil’s Tower, Gibraltar 108

Devonian Period 175, 178

Dickens, Charles: Bleak House 75

Dickinson, Emily 222

Dilwynites pollen 197

Dimorphodon (dinosaur) 26

Dinornis maximus (extinct New Zealand moa) 29, 30

dinosaur 20, 34, 170–71, 176, 259, 260

Crystal Palace reconstructions 31–3, 31

de-extinction and 214, 236

Dinosauria 26, 31

‘dinosaur pine’ 197–200

Dippy (plaster cast of Diplodocus carnegii) 257–8, 263

extinction events xviii, xx, 170–71, 178–82, 190, 195

Frankie the dinosaur 273–4

holotype 259

Owen and naming of 26, 31, 260

transitional form from dinosaurs to birds (Archaeopteryx) 173

See also individual species name

Dippy (plaster cast of Diplodocus carnegii) 257–8, 263

Dobzhansky, Theodosius 110

DNA 36, 52–5, 110, 111, 221, 223, 228, 229–31, 269

dodo xiii–xv, xv, xix, 33, 144, 146–7, 210, 214, 234, 236, 245, 249, 266, 270

Donlan, Josh 232, 233

Doodebewshet 41, 44

Dorset 23, 27, 27

Dorudon (genus of extinct basilosaurid) 241–2

Drinnan, Andrew 197

Duckworth, John 41, 42

Dutch United East India Company (VOC, or Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) 114

earth, age of xvi, 28, 91, 171, 200

East India Company 248

Easter Eve 41, 44

eating extinct beasts 235

École Polytechnique, Paris 6

Egypt 6–7, 32, 102, 106, 206, 231, 242

Ehrlich, Paul and Anne: Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species (1981) 187

Eldredge, Niles 174–6

elephant 3, 4, 10–11, 17–18, 23, 33, 144, 148, 152, 154, 164, 209, 212, 231, 232, 245, 260

Elkin, A. P. 132

embranchements 10, 19

emu 267

Encephalartos woodii cycad 213

Endeavour, HMS 115, 204

Engis 1 and Engis 2 (Neanderthal remains) 93, 101

Enshi, western China 198

enslavement xix, 4, 31, 38, 62, 74, 80, 83, 89, 103, 122–3, 147, 203, 216, 246–8, 265

Eocene epoch 241

eons 176–7. See also individual eon

eugenics 218–19

evolution, theory of 5, 10, 20, 33, 49, 52, 106–7, 198, 210, 223, 234, 241, 249, 250–51, 256

artificial selection 215

Darwin discovers 79–81, 85, 97, 99, 102, 103, 104, 172

extinction and 111, 146, 173–7, 181, 183–4, 190, 234

natural selection 79–80, 95, 161, 172, 272

phylogenies (evolutionary family trees) 269

Ewing, Ann 229

extinction

as a choice, recognizing 274

colonized peoples, extinction of see colonized peoples, extinction of

de-extinction see de-extinction

definition xix–xx

discovery of 3–34

extermination and, slippage between 59, 74–8, 80–84, 105–6, 149

histories of extinction as valuable intellectual and ethical endeavour xix

mass extinction see mass extinction

museums and see museums and individual museum name

natural extinction/natural law/natural process of xix–xx, xxii, 28, 34, 59, 74–80, 84, 144–5, 147, 150, 167–8, 191, 272

as a political choice xxiii, 191, 213, 275–6

recording of species loss/international conservationist movement, origins of 143–69, 144, 155

as species loss xix

of undescribed species xvii

Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) xviii

Extinction Rebellion 263

facial angle 98–9, 98, 101

family surname or hereditary title, loss of xix

Fan Memorial Institute of Biology, Beijing 198

Fauna Preservation Society 158

Feldhofer cave, Neander Valley 94

First Kamchatka expedition (1725–7) 143

First Nations 53, 57, 59, 189

Fisher, James 159–60

Fitzroy, Captain Robert 171

Fleming, Reverend John: A History of British Animals 145–6

Flint, Lieutenant Edmund 101

flint tools 95, 106

flooding 20, 28, 91, 92, 95, 273

Biblical 17, 18, 20, 91

Flower, William Henry 249, 250–51

Folch, José 230

foraminifera, or forams 179

Foreman, David 224

Fortingall Yew 192–3

fossils xx, 240, 241, 242, 268

Cuvier and 10–11, 14–15, 17–18, 19, 34, 92

dark extinctions and xvii

de-extinction and 231

definition of 10–11

human, discovery of 85, 86–8, 87, 92–101, 108–9, 111

‘Lazarus Taxa’ or ‘Lazarus species’ 197–8

‘living fossils’, Wollemi pines as 195, 197–200

Mary Anning discovers 23, 24, 26

mass extinction and 170–71, 173–5, 175, 177–9

‘medals of creation’ 20

name 10

Natural History Museum, London and 258, 259

Neanderthal 97–101, 100, 110, 111

number of species xvi, 163

Ohio Animal and 3, 4, 5, 18

oldest xvi

seed-bearing conifer 195–7

four-stage model of human development 102

Foyn, Svend 243

Francis I, King of France 215

Frankie the dinosaur 273–4

Fraser, Malcolm 122

Fraser’s Magazine 47–8

Frelinghuysen, Theodore 63

French Revolution (1789) 6, 8, 9, 96, 144

Frosty (world’s first calf born of frozen bull semen) 229

Frozen Ark 229–31

frozen biological material 223, 228–31

Frozen Zoo 229

Fuhlrott, Johann Karl 94

functionally extinct 215, 273

Galton, Francis: Hereditary Genius 219

Garrod, Dorothy 108

genetics 110, 161, 162, 210, 269

de-extinction and 215, 221–4, 228–31, 234, 241

DNA and see DNA

editing techniques 234

genome sequencing and 234–5

reintroducing genetic diversity into living populations 234

testing 52–6, 59

Geneva Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (1931) 253–4

genocide xx, xxii, 66–7, 132, 173, 186, 219, 227

defined 81–5

Geological Society of London 20–21, 86, 87, 94–5

George III, King of Great Britain 3, 115

George IV, King of Great Britain 267

Gibraltar 1 (first adult Neanderthal unearthed) 101, 108

Gibraltar 2 (first child Neanderthal unearthed) 108

Gibraltar Scientific Society 101

giraffe 33, 152, 158, 240, 241, 259, 260–61

Glacier National Park, US 72

Glen, William 182

Global Biodiversity Framework (‘30 by 30’) 188–90, 191, 274

Global Tree Portal 212

Gmelin, Johann Friedrich 268

golden toad of Costa Rica 273

Gondwanaland 201–2 205, 207, 208

Gould, Stephen J. 175–6, 177

Göring, Hermann 227

Grand Canyon, US 72

grandes écoles 6

great auk, or garefowl xx, xxiii, 37, 145, 146–7, 167, 220, 234, 236, 266

Great Dying 84, 177–8

Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback 222

Greenaway, James: Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World 153

Greenpeace 255–7

grey wolf 72, 224

Griotte de Spy, Belgium, Neanderthal skeletons found at 101

Gubbio, Italy, evidence of K-Pg transition at 179

habitat loss 202, 211, 212, 215, 217, 222, 225, 234, 257, 260, 275

critical habitat 202

Hadean eon 176

Hamilton, Charles 43

Harmer, Sidney Frederick 251–2

Harper, Francis: Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Old World 152–3

Harris, James 133

Harris, Wayne 197

Harris, William 132–3

Harvard University 76, 109, 176, 231, 235

Haynes, Sarah 68

heath hen 220, 236

Heck cattle 226–8

Heck, Ludwig 227

Heck, Lutz and Heinz 227–8

Hellabrunn Zoo, Munich 227

Henry VII, King of England 37

Henry, Teuira 270; Ancient Tahiti 270

Higuchi, Russell 228

Hildebrand, Alan R. 182

Hill, Ernestine 126

Hills, Danny 221

Hintze, Lady Dorothy 258, 262

Hintze, Sir Michael 258, 262

hippopotamus 14, 152, 242

Hiroshima, atomic bombing of (1945) 183, 185

Hodgkin, Thomas 74

Holdridge’s toad 273

Holmes, Arthur: Principles of Physical Geology 201

Holocaust 81, 219, 227

holotype 259

Homo 89, 91, 100, 111

Homo caudatus 89

Homo ferus 89

Homo habilis 109

Homo neanderthalensis. See Neanderthals

Homo sapiens 88–91, 94, 165

Homo troglodytes 89

Hooker, Joseph Dalton 96, 203

Hooley, Reginald Walter 259

hoop pine 195

Hope, the blue whale 239–40, 239, 249–51, 257–8, 263

Hornaday, William Temple 149

Howley, James P. 48, 51

Hsen-Hsu Hu 198, 199

Human Genome Diversity Project 55

human origins 85, 86–112, 87, 90, 98, 100

Human Tissue Act (2004) 57

humpback whale 251, 254, 255

Hunter, Bob 256

hunter-gatherers 102, 112

Hunter, John 4, 90

Hunter, William 3–4, 6, 18

Hunterian Museum, London 4, 28

Huxley, Thomas Henry: Man’s Place in Nature 99, 100

hybrids/hybridization 110, 215, 222, 228, 231

hyena 14, 22, 23, 107, 109

Hylaeosaurus (dinosaur) 26

Hyophorbe amaricaulis palm 212–13

Ichthyosaurus (dinosaur) 23

Iguanodon (dinosaur) 26, 31, 32, 259

imprinting 166–7

India xiii, 97, 102, 117, 157, 190, 201, 248, 267

Inglis, Bishop John 44, 48

Institut National, Paris 6

International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) (1946) 254

International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP) (later, BirdLife International) 157

International HapMap Project 55

International Office for the Protection of Nature (IOPN) 151–3

International Office of Documentation and Correlation for the Protection of Nature 151

International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN)

declaration of species extinction 230

General Assembly 158, 209

Green Status 165, 168

IUCN Bulletin 158–60

Least Concern category 164–5, 168

List of Threatened Species 156, 162–3, 212

origins 157–8

Red Data Books 158–63, 209

Red List 136, 158, 159, 160–65, 168, 186, 202, 209, 212, 257

Species Survival Commission 161, 163, 211

Threatened Plants Committee (TPC) 211

Survival Service 157–8, 160, 164

World Conservation Congress (2012) 165

International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN) 153, 155, 157, 168

International Whaling Commission (IWC) 254, 256, 257

inter-species justice 234

iridium 179–82

Iron Age 91, 93, 103, 104

ivory-billed woodpecker 154, 273

Iziko South African Museum 228

Jackson, Andrew 62–3

Jamaica 31, 89, 246–9

Jameson, Robert 51–2

Jardin des Plantes, Paris 8–9, 8

Jardin du Roi, Paris 7–8

Java Stingaree stingray of Indonesia xviii

Javan tiger 215, 275

Jefferson, Thomas: Notes on the State of Virginia 5, 18, 60, 61, 149

Joe, Chief Mi’sel 51, 53, 56

John Murray 95–6, 113, 126, 128, 129, 133

Jones, Frederic Wood 130–31

Jones, Wyn 194

Joseph, Annie 85

Juunkan Gorge, Australia 261

K-Pg transition 179, 180, 181

Kamloops, British Columbia 66

Kanaka pigeon 268

Kent Wildlife Trust 225

Kew Gardens, London 31, 96, 203, 204, 209–11, 213

King Billy (wild tree) 206

King, Charles Bird 67–8

King, William 100

Kingsley, Charles: The Water-Babies 146–7

Kirkdale Cave, North Yorkshire 22–3

Koch, Albert C. 258

Koch, Alexander 84

Kolbert, Elizabeth: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History 188

Konick horses 226

Krakatoa, eruption of (1883) 180

Kruger Park, South Africa 73

Kyoto University, Japan 198

L’Estrange, Sir Hamon xiv

La Quina rock shelter, Charente, France 108

Labrador, Canada 35, 36, 38, 51, 216

Lacépède, Comte de 7–8

Lagar Velho rock shelter, Portugal 110

Lake Success, US 153, 156, 157, 158, 165, 168

Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste 96

Lande, Russell 161–2, 165

Landry, Ardy 51

Langsdorff, Georg Heinrich von 144

languages, extinction of 135–6, 221

Lanney, William 118, 129

Latham, John 266–8

Laurasia 201

‘Lazarus Taxa’ or ‘Lazarus species’ (lifeways known only from the fossil record, but then found living) 197–8

League of Nations 152, 253, 254

Leakey, Richard: The Sixth Extinction: Biodiversity and Its Survival 188

Lee, Richard: ‘The Extinction of Races’ 77, 78, 81

Lefroy, Henry Bruce 123

Leigh, Reverend John 43

Lemkin, Raphael 81–2, 85

Leopold, Aldo 221

Lewin, Roger: The Sixth Extinction: Biodiversity and Its Survival 188

Liassic Period 27

Lilly, John C.: Man and Dolphin: Adventures of a New Scientific Frontier 254–5

Linnaeus, Carl 89–91, 90, 100, 241

Linnean Society of London 266–7

Little Passage peoples 36–7

Liverpool 265–71

Liverpool Pigeon 266–7, 269

Lloyd, T. G. B. 48

local extinction 156, 215

London Convention (1900) 150–52

London Zoo 161

lonely survivors 212–13

Lonesome George (last Pinta Island tortoise) 273

Long Now Foundation, The 221

long-headed rhinoceros 14

Louis XIII, King of France 7

Louis XIV’s elephant 33

Louis XV’s rhinoceros 33

Louisiana Purchase (1803) 61

Louvre Palace, Paris 8, 15

Lower Rhine Medical and Natural History Society, Bonn 94

Lubbock, John: Pre-Historic Times 102, 103–8, 112

Lung-Hsing Yang 198

lungfish 199–200

Lusty, Charlotte 211

Lyell, Charles 95, 97, 99

Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man 103–4

Principles of Geology 28, 171–2

Mabo v Queensland (no. 2) 136–7

Mabo, Eddie 136–7

Mace, Georgina 161–2, 165

Mace-Lande criteria 161–2, 165

MacKinnon, Donald 129

MacKinven, Amy 211

Macphail, Mike 197

Madagascar xiii–xv, 201

Makassans 115

Malcolmson, Walter 122–3

Malm, August Wilhelm 253

Malm Whale 253

mammals xiii, xvii, 10, 19, 32, 241

listing of endangered 152–4, 157–9, 162, 163–5, 168, 170, 209

Mammal Hall, Natural History Museum 253, 258–9

Mammalia 241

mass extinctions and 178

mammoths 12, 33, 97, 103, 144, 186, 192, 214, 249

de-extinction and 228, 231–2, 233, 234, 235, 236

Siberian mammoth 4, 10, 11, 14, 16–18, 22, 95, 228

Man, Edward Horace: On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands 124

Manhattan project 183

Mantell, Gideon Algernon 26

Mantellisaurus (dinosaur) 240, 258–9, 260

Marconi, Guglielmo 35

Maritime Archaic peoples 36

Marsh, George Perkins: Man and Nature 145–6

marsupials 14–15, 154, 155, 171, 245

Martha the Passenger Pigeon xxi, 212–13, 218–21, 220

Martin, H. 108

Martin, Laura 167

Martin, Paul 232, 234

Mascarene Islands xiii

mass extinctions 170–91

Anthropocene and 185–6

Archaeopteryx fossil and 173

atomic bomb and 183–5

biodiversity crisis and 186–91, 274

Darwin and 171–3

dinosaur extinction event 170–71, 178–82, 190, 195

discovery of xxiii, 170–82, 175

Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species 187

fifth mass extinction, Cretaceous Period 178

first mass extinction, Ordovician 178

five mass extinction events xx, 176–7, 190–91

fourth mass extinction, Triassic 178

punctuated equilibria theory 174–5

radioactive dating and 179–80

Sagan and 184–5

second mass extinction, Devonian 178

The Sinking Ark and 187

sixth mass extinction, Anthropocene xvii, xviii, xx, 188, 190–91, 236–7

third mass extinction, Great Dying, Permian 178

‘wholesale extinctions’, Newell on 174

Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, asteroid strike at 170–71, 179–82

mastodon, American 14, 18, 19, 34, 232, 240

‘Missouri Leviathan’ 15–16, 16, 240, 258–9, 259, 260

Mathew, John 137–8

Mathews, Robert Hamilton 124–5

Maungwudaus, or George Henry 69

Mauritius xiii, xiv, 171, 212–13

McVay, Scott 255

Mee, Arthur 128

Megalosaurus (dinosaur) 25, 26

Megatherium americanum 12

Melody, George 68–9

Melville, Herman: Moby Dick 243

Melville, Ronald 210

Metasequoia genus 198

Metasequoia, City of 199

Mi’kmaq 49–51, 53

Miawpukek First Nation 51, 53

Michel, Helen V. 180

migration

animal species (excluding humans) 5–6, 11, 21, 37, 148, 151, 165–7, 214, 216, 237, 242, 244, 249

human 35, 36, 51, 52, 53, 56–9, 76, 91, 105, 106, 109, 114, 119, 258

Miki, Shigeru 198–9

‘missing link’ between apes and humans 97, 99, 108

Missouri Leviathan, or American Incognitum 15–16, 16, 240, 258–9, 259, 260

mitochondrial DNA 53

moa 29, 30

Molbech, Christian 93

molecular clocks 179, 180, 200

monogenesis 90

Monroe, James 61

Montbéliard 9

Moran, Thomas: Yellowstone Lake 70, 71

Morton, Samuel 76

Mosasaurus (dinosaur) 14

Munch, Edvard: The Scream 180

Murrant, Edwin 119

Museé de l’Homme (Museum of Man), Paris 109

Musée des Arts, Paris 8

museums

donors 262–3

Extinction Rebellion hold die-ins in 263

imperial origins/legacies 57–8, 240, 246–9, 261–2

repatriation of remains 57–8

Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle (Museum of Natural History), Paris 8, 9, 14, 19, 33–4, 276

Museum at St John’s, Newfoundland 57

Museum of Derby 269

Museum of Natural History, Mainz 228

Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 93–4

Myers, Norman: The Sinking Ark 187

Nagasaki, atomic bombing of (1945) 183

narratives of discovery 200, 271

National Central University, China 198

National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen 93

National Museum of Palaeontology, Paris 107

National Museums of Scotland 52–3

national parks 61, 67–73, 70, 71, 83, 149, 151, 166, 188–9, 193, 194, 198, 202, 205, 207, 261. See also individual park name

Native Americans 5, 18, 34, 54, 60–73, 71, 78, 83, 84, 105, 137, 149, 150, 151, 188–9, 219

American Civil War (1861–5) and 64

Bureau of Indian Affairs 64

Doolittle’s report on the Condition of the Indian tribes (1867) 64–5

forced assimilation of 65–6

General Allotment Act Dawes Act (1887) 65

Indian Removal Act (1830) 62–4

Indian Reorganization Act, or Indian New Deal (1934) 65

national parks and 67–73, 71, 72, 83, 149, 151, 188–9

Notes on the State of Virginia and 5, 18, 60, 61, 149

Pratt argues ‘all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.’ 66

reservation system 61, 64, 65, 67, 73, 83, 149, 150

residential schools/Native boarding schools 61, 66–7, 73

Sand Creek massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by US Army (1864) 64

subsistence rights 71–2

unmarked graves 66

Native Title Act (1993) 156

Native Union of Western Australia 132

Natural History Museum, London 13, 23, 150, 238–40, 238, 239, 245–53, 257–63

natural selection 79–80, 95, 161, 172, 272

Nature 107, 114, 177, 229, 232; ‘Primitive Races within the British Empire’ 81

Nature Protection Authority, Germany 227

‘nature’s diplomats’ 152

Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) 85, 94–103, 100, 106, 107–11, 236

Needham, Rodney 124

Neolithic Period 103–4, 106

Neshnabé nation 217

New Holland (modern Australia) 14–15, 75, 114–15

New South Wales, Australia 28, 117, 201, 202, 208

New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) 194, 205

New York Times 181, 210

Newell, Norman D. 174–5, 178–9

Newfoundland, Canada 35–40, 45, 47, 48, 49–54, 57, 58, 75, 131, 146, 216, 253, 272

Newsham, Amelia 89

Newton, Alfred 147, 167

Nicobar pigeon 268–70

Niland, Darcy 113

Noah’s Ark 91, 108

Noble, David 194–6

Nonosabasut 41, 43, 45, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56–7, 59

Noongar people 128, 138–9

Norfolk Island pine 195, 202–3

northern white rhino xviii, 165

Noss, Reed: ‘Rewilding and Biodiversity’ 224–5

Novak, Ben 222–3

nuclear war xvii, 183–5, 255–6

Ohio animal 3–5, 18, 144

Old Man of La Chapelle 107, 109

Oldfield, Sara 211

Oligocene Period 242

Once There Were Billions: Vanished Birds of North America exhibition (2014–16) 220

1000 Genomes Project 55

Oostvaardersplassen (OVP) 225–7

Oppenheimer, Robert J. 183

Ordovician Period 178

Orsmond, Reverend John Muggeridge 270

‘overkill’ 232, 234

Owen, Richard 26, 28–9, 30, 31–2, 245, 246, 249, 258

Oxford University xiv–xv

Museum of Natural History xiv–xv

Palace of Fontainebleau, France 153

Palaeolithic Period 103, 104, 106

Paleo-Eskimos 36

paleobiology 174–6

Paleogene Period 179

Palgrave, Francis 104

Palmer, Walter 261

Pando 192

Pangea 201

‘Paraguay animal’ 11

Paris, France 6, 12, 14–15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 33, 34, 47, 55, 69, 86, 97, 107, 109, 153, 276

Paris Observatory 6

Parkes, Alan 229

Parkinson, James: Organic Remains of a Former World 20–21

passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorious) xx, xxi, 214–23, 220, 234, 236, 237, 251, 260

Paxton, Joseph 32

Payne, Roger S. 255

Peale, Charles Willson 16, 17, 22

Peale, Rembrandt 16–17

Peale, Rubens 16

Pengelly, William 94–5

‘penitent butchers’ 151

People’s Palace, Sydenham 32

peregrine falcon 223–4

Peregrine Fund 223

Permian Period 170, 178

Perthes, Boucher de 93

Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia 143

Peyrère, Isaac de la: Prae-Adamitae 90

Peyton Junior, John 42–4, 45, 48

Peyton Senior, John 42–4

Phacops rana trilobite 175, 175

Phanerozoic Period 176–7

philanthropy 75, 235, 262

Phillips, John C. 151, 152–3

photosynthesis 209

Phyllis Cormack 256–7

phylogenies (evolutionary family trees) 269–70

Pieper, Friedrich Wilhelm 94

Pillay, Judge Navi 190

Pinikura people 261

Pinosaur 205–6, 212

Pithecanthropus fossils 108

Pitt Rivers Museum 106

Pleistocene Park 222, 231–2, 235

Pleistocene Period 186, 222, 231–5

Plesiosaurus (dinosaur) 23, 24, 26, 246

Pointed Plateau Loach fish of China xviii

Pokagon, Chief Simon 217

Polge, Chris 229

polygenesis 91, 103

Possession Island 115

Powell, Miles 149

Pratt, General Richard Henry 66

pre-taxonomic period xvii

‘prehistory’ 93–4

Prentice, Rockefeller 229

Prichard, James Cowles: ‘On the Extinction of Human Races’ 59

Prince Edward Island 216

private collections 27

progressive civilization 103

Proterozoic Period 176

pterodactyls 27

public exhibitions 15–17

Pulling, Christopher 39–40

punctuated equilibria 175–6

Puutu Kunti Kurrama 261

quagga 228–9

Quaternary extinction event 192

races, human xxii, 59, 61, 76–81, 82, 84, 90, 91, 98, 99, 100, 102, 105–6, 112, 114, 130, 149–50, 272

racism xx–xxi, 55, 99, 102–3, 112, 139, 218–19, 247, 271

Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred Reginald 123–5, 138–9, 140; The Andaman Islanders 124

radioactive dating 179–80, 200

Rankin, Arthur 68

Rau quagga 228–9

Rau, Reinhold E. 228

Raup, David 176, 177, 181

Raust, Philippe 270

Ray, John 241

Real, Gasper de Côrte 37–8

Red Book of Endangered Languages 136

Red Book: Wildlife in Danger, The (James Fisher, Noel Simon, and Jack Vincent) 159

red deer 154, 226

Red Lady of Paviland 92

Reeves, John 40

Register of Major National Protected Wild Plants 199

relationships of exchange 28–9, 31

Remembrance Day for Lost Species xviii

Retzius, Anders 98–9

Revive and Restore 221–2

rewilding 222, 223–37. See also de-extinction

Reynolds-Boyce, Carol 54

rhino 14, 15, 18, 33, 107, 148, 152, 154, 158, 164, 165, 209, 242, 260, 273

Rio Tinto 261

Rivers, Pitt 106–7

Rodrigues Solitaire xiii, 270

Roman Empire 91, 92, 98, 238, 246

Röntgen, William 200

Roosevelt, Franklin D. 65

Rorquals 243

Rosetta Project 221

Rosetta Stone 7

Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney 198, 202–7

Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew Gardens, London 31, 96, 203, 204, 209–11, 213

Royal Cabinet of Natural History of Madrid 11

Royal College of Physicians 47, 246

Royal College of Surgeons 4, 47, 97, 99

Royal Geographical Society of Australasia 122

Royal Society 4, 209, 246, 267

Rudwick, Martin 15

Rule, John 28–9, 31

Ruskin, John 262

Ryan, Lyndall 118

Sabah kauri 195

Sackler family 262

Sagan, Carl 184–5

Sahul 114

Saint-Hilaire, Étienne Geoffroy 9–10

Salter, Elizabeth 124

Sams III, Charles ‘Chuck’ 83

San Diego Zoo 229

Sarawak kauri 195

Sauer, Martin 144

Scaglia rossa limestone 179

Schaaffhausen, Herrmann 94, 97

Schmerling, Philippe-Charles 93, 101

Science 148, 177, 180, 185

science

historical context, placing within 271

religion, conflict with 21, 102

Scientific American 174

Scott, Peter 158–9

sea birds, first British legislation protecting (1869) 148

Second Kamchatka expedition (1733–43) 143

Second World War (1939–45) 47, 108–9, 132, 145, 153, 173–4, 183, 190, 200, 210, 228, 244, 246, 254

Secord, James A. 96

seed-bearing conifers 194–8

seed banking 207, 210

Sepkoski, David 174, 184

Sepkoski, John ‘Jack’ 176–7, 181, 184

Serengeti Park, Tanzania 73

Shanawdithit (Nancy or Nancy April) 41–8, 46, 58–9, 81

Shawnee 3, 16

shishuan tree 198

Shufeldt, Robert Wilson 218

Sinanthropus (‘Peking Man’) 108

Sinixt First Nation 85, 272

Sloane (née Rose), Elizabeth Langley 247–8

Sloane, Hans 246–9, 261

Smith, Audrey 229

Smith, Darian D.: ‘Mrs Daisy Bates at her desk in Adelaide, South Australia’ 127

Smithsonian Institution 83, 218, 219, 220

Social Darwinism 272

Society for Conservation Biology 224

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 48

Society for the Protection of Birds 147

Songs of the Humpback Whale 255

Sotheby’s 206, 207

Soulé, Michael 224–5, 232

South African Museum, Cape Town 228

South Sea Company 248

South West Native Title Settlement 139

Southworth, Press Clay 217

Spary, Emma 9

Species Conservation Monitoring Unit 160

species

classification of see taxonomy

extinction, origins of concern over 143–69, 144, 155

as human invention xvi

listing threatened, origins of 145, 152–69

total number of living xvi–xvii, 163

See also individual organization and species name

Speck, Frank G. 48–51; Beothuk and Micmac 49

spiky monkey puzzle tree 195

Spong, Paul 256

spotted green pigeon (Columba maculata) 265–71, 267, 269

St John’s, Newfoundland 35, 44, 45, 46, 47, 57, 58

St Peter 143

Stammwitz, Percy 253

Stammwitz, Stuart 253

State of the World’s Trees report (2021) 211–12

Stead, W. T. 120

Steller, Georg Wilhelm 143

Steller’s sea cow xxiii, 33, 143–4, 144, 146, 147, 167, 234

Stevns Klint cliffs, Denmark 180

Stone Age 93, 99, 102, 103–4, 106, 112, 113

storage of specimens 15, 27, 219, 220, 228, 243, 250, 251, 252

Stowe, Irving 255–6

Stranded Whales Programme 251

Straus, William 109

Sulawesi kauri 195

Sumatran rhinoceros 158

Sumatran tiger 276, 276

Sydenham Hill, London 31–3, 31

Sydney, Australia 117, 119–20, 132, 171, 198, 202–7

Sydney, Fred Maynard 133

Tahiti 105, 115, 171, 270

Taíno 246, 247

Talbot, Lee Merriam 157, 158; A Look at Threatened Species report (1960) 158

TallBear, Kim: Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science 55–6

tapir 14–15, 18

Tasman, Abel 114–15

Tasmania 57, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 105, 114, 117–18, 129–30, 130, 154, 155–7, 168, 197, 201, 272

Tauros Programme 228

taxonomy xvii, 10, 19, 26, 89–91, 100, 102, 157, 160, 168, 211, 240–41, 259

tectonic plates 201–2

Temnodontosaurus 26

Thomsen, C. J. 93

Thomson, Donald 131–2

Thomson, James Park 122

Thornback, Jane 160

Three Age system 93, 103–4

thylacine xxi, 33, 155–7, 155, 161, 168, 209, 234, 236

tiger xvi, 155, 164, 187, 212, 215, 232, 275, 276, 276

Tilgate Forest, Sussex 26

Times, The 47, 122–3, 130–31, 199

Tindale, Norman B.: Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: The Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names 124–5

titi 270

Todd, Zoe 189

Toney, Ivy 51

Toney, Joe 50, 50

Toney, Kop 50

Toney, Santu 49–50, 50, 59

toothed whales (Odontoceti) 240–42

Tournal, Paul 92–3

Tradescant, John xiv

trafficking, illegal wild animal 164, 235

Treaty of the Hague (1795) 10

trees 192–213

assessment of threatened trees, world’s first (1998) 211

botanical gardens and 202–6

extinction as political choice and 213

IUCN’s Species Survival Commission Threatened Plants Committee (TPC) 211

‘Lazarus Taxa’ or ‘Lazarus species’ (lifeways known only from the fossil record, but then found living) 197–8

lonely survivors 212–13

narratives of discovery and 200

seed-bearing conifers 194–8

State of the World’s Trees report (2021) 211–12

Wollemi pine 196–209, 212–13

See also individual tree and tree species name

Triassic Period 178, 185, 195

trilobites 170, 173, 174, 175, 175, 176

Trinity test (1945) 183, 185

Trukanini (last Tasmanian woman) 118, 129–30

Turbinaria coral 240, 259, 260

turtles 14, 217

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) 135–6, 152, 153, 193, 265

United Nations (UN) 190

Biodiversity Conference, or COP 15 (2022) 188, 273–4

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) 81, 82

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) 137

Global Biodiversity Framework (‘30 by 30’) 188–90, 191, 274

International Year of Biodiversity (2010) 163

origins 152

Stockholm Declaration (1972) 210

Working Group on Indigenous Peoples 137

United States of America (USA) 60–73, 219, 232, 242, 254, 256, 257

American Civil War (1861–5) 64

American incognitum in 15–17, 16, 19

bison and 72, 148–50, 168, 219, 224

Bureau of Indian Affairs 64

Cold War and 183, 254

constitution (1787) 62

Doolittle’s report on the Condition of the Indian tribes (1867) 64–5

forced assimilation in 65–6

General Allotment Act Dawes Act (1887) 65

Indian Removal Act (1830) 62–4

Indian Reorganization Act, or Indian New Deal (1934) 65

Mexican-American War (1846–8) 64

national parks 67–73, 71, 72, 83, 149, 151, 188–9

Native Americans 5, 34, 60–73, 71, 78, 83, 84, 105, 137, 219

Notes on the State of Virginia 5, 18, 60, 61, 149

reservation system 61, 64, 65, 67, 73, 83, 149, 150

residential schools/Native boarding schools 61, 66–7, 73

Sand Creek massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by US Army (1864) 64

subsistence rights 71–2

Van Diemen’s Land 75, 117

Van Diemen’s Land Company 156

Vera, Frans 226

Viaguard/Accu-Metrics 53–4

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain 69

Vikings 37, 150

Vizenor, Robert Gerald 57

Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) xviii

Waitz, Theodor 76–7

Waldegrave, Vice Admiral William 40–41

Wallace, Alfred Russel 79–81

Walpole Island, Ontario 68–9

Wan-Chun Cheng 198, 199

Waterhouse, Alfred 246, 260

Waterhouse Hawkins, Benjamin 31

Watson, Grant 123

Wegener, Alfred: On the Origin of Continents and Oceans 200–201

West African black rhino 273

Wexford Harbour Board 250

Wexford Whale 249–53, 257–8

Whadjuk people 137

whales xxiii, 33, 37, 38, 209, 211, 212, 213, 240–43, 250, 253–4

defined 240–41

hunting 240, 242–5, 248–54, 256–7

Lilly establishes that cetaceans are intelligent, sentient beings 254–5

name 242

Natural History Museum, London and 239–40, 239, 249–53, 257–8, 263

origins 241–3

protection of 253–7

‘Save the Whales’ 255–7

song 255

See also individual species

White, Isobel 125

whooping crane 154, 155, 165–7, 168

Wickham, Edward 250

Wilcox, Judge Justice Murray 139

Wildlands Network 224

Wildlands Project 224

Wildwood Trust 225

Williamson, Emily 147

Wilson, Alexander 216

Wilson, Daniel: The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland 93–4

Wilson, Edward O. 176, 189

Wisconsin Society for Ornithology 221

Wishing Tree 202–3

Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) 196–208, 212–13

Wollemi National Park, Australia 194, 207

Wolley, John 147

Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada 166

Wood, Nelson R. 219

World Atlas of Languages 136

World Museum, Liverpool 265–9

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) 158, 190, 212

Wyalusing State Park, US 221

Wyoming, Battle of (1778) 67

Yellowstone National Park, US 70–72, 71, 149, 151, 188, 224

Yooreel, Fanny Balbuk 137–8

Yosemite National Park, US 70, 72

Young, Kenneth 125

Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, asteroid strike at Chicxulub crater in 170–71, 179–82

Zimov, Sergey 231–2

Zoological Society of London 29

Zoological Society Golden Jubilee Conservation Conference, San Diego 219–20

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First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2025

Copyright © Sadiah Qureshi, 2025

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ISBN: 978-0-241-35211-3

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