Extinctions in Near Time

'This book is a must-read if you have any curiosity, fascination, or professional interest in extinctions of the past or present. If you are among those concerned about our environment and the fact that we are losing more animal species each year, you should read this book.' Discovering Archaeology, 1:5 (1999)

• 1 • Cretaceous Meteor Showers, the Human Ecological “Niche,” and the Sixth Extinction.- 2 • Prehistoric Extinctions on Islands and Continents.- 3 • The Interaction of Humans, Megaherbivores, and Habitats in the Late Pleistocene Extinction Event.- 4 • The Power of Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherers: Forward and Backward Searching for Evidence about Mammoth Extinction.- 5 • A Comparison of Methods for the Probabilistic Determination of Vertebrate Extinction Chronologies.- 6 • Putting North America’s End-Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinction in Context: Large-Scale Analyses of Spatial Patterns, Extinction Rates, and Size Distributions.- 7 • Rates, Patterns, and Processes of Landscape Transformation and Extinction in Madagascar.- 8 • Extinctions and Local Disappearances of Vertebrates in the Western Mediterranean Islands.- 9 • Introduced Predators and Avifaunal Extinction in New Zealand.- 10 • Late Quaternary Extinctions in Australasia: An Overview.- 11 • Late Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions: A European Perspective.- 12 • The Quiet Crisis: A Preliminary Listing of the Freshwater Fishes of the World that Are Extinct or “Missing in Action”.- 13 • Requiem Æternam: The Last Five Hundred Years of Mammalian Species Extinctions.- Systematic Index.- General Index.