George R. McGhee Jr. is Distinguished Professor of Paleobiology at Rutgers University and a member of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Klosterneuburg, Austria. He has held research positions at the University of Tübingen, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the American Museum of Natural History.

McGhee has written a science mystery about one of the major extinction events in the Phanerozoic in a well organized investigation of a mass murder . . . This book is a clear, concise treatment of a complex problem that deserves readership beyond individuals interested in extinctions or the Devonian.