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The Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction

byGísli Pálsson

Gísli Pálsson follows the disappearance of the great auk and the people who helped make its extinction visible to science. Drawing on accounts from Icelandic hunters and the unpublished records of Victorian naturalists John Wolley and Alfred Newton, he reconstructs a world in which collecting rare birds could hasten their destruction. Their search for surviving auks became an investigation into humanity’s power to erase a species. Combining anthropology, natural history, and travel, Pálsson connects this intimate nineteenth-century tragedy to today’s larger questions about responsibility, conservation, and the accelerating loss of wildlife.

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Publication date

2024-02-06

Format

Hardcover

Pages

328

ISBN

9780691230986