Extinction, Evidence Overlooked
In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin envisioned that “extinction and natural selection go hand in hand.” Extinction, however, was a relatively new concept, only emerging in revolutionary France following the publication of the Essay on the Theory of the Earth in 1813 by French naturalist Georges Cuvier.
“All these facts, consistent among themselves,” Cuvier argued, “seem to me to prove the existence of a world previous to ours… And what revolution was able to wipe it out [extinction]?”
Cuvier was a renowned French scientist who established the study of extinction as a distinct field of inquiry. When completed in time for the 1889 World’s Fair, his name was one of the only seventy-two names inscribed onto the Eiffel Tower.
Elizabeth Kolbert explains in The Sixth Extinction (2014) that the discovery of extinction made evolution seem “as unlikely as levitation,” an issue Darwin conveniently overlooked.
