When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Michael J. Benton's text, When Life Nearly Died, is superb. The topic of the book is the end-Permian extinction, an event less known to the average reader but of far greater impact than that of the KT boundary extinction of the dinosaurs. Although not necessarily as emotively compelling or as dramatic as the latter, the Permian devastation left the planet with only 4-10% of its previous species. It was a bottleneck of major consequence for subsequent biodiversity.

I would recommend this volume to any general reader with an interest in paleontology and earth history. The book covers the early history of geology and especially the biographies and activities of those researchers who helped define the rock sequences which every student memorizes: Precambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary. He focuses particularly on those who clarified the facies of the Permian and Triassic and brought to light the fact that "something funny" was going on then.

Although no real background in geology is needed to comprehend the narrative, I suspect that most will find the first chapters more interesting than later ones. The author touches upon subjects like uniformitarianism and catastrophism and the disagreement between them and upon the scientific free-for-all that arises over new theories like the impact demise of the dinosaurs, making them quite clear for the average reader. He subsequently builds upon the basics he has provided to carry one through his thesis. Once he gets into the actual discussion about the causes of the Permian event, however, the discussion settles down to chemistry, especially atmospheric and oceanic chemistry: how they work, how they interact, and how they can go horribly wrong. This may be a little tougher going for some readers. For those expecting a definitive answer to what caused the extinction, they will be disappointed. While there are contenders aplenty, the author honestly admits that there is not yet a clear winner and the ultimate cause may be multifacited.

I was especially impressed by the author's ability to stay on track. He gave a good background discussion, added some information about his own contributions, discussed the theories currently entertained by the geological community and ended with a discussion about biodiversity and human impact on the environment. In short the book was about the Permian extinction with enough support material to help a non-professional reader understand it and was not a platform for an autobiographical ego trip. He also gave a very clear and unbiased account of other scientists' work and how their efforts fit into the whole picture. In short he gave credit where credit was due.

A superb overview of the Permian extinction

Distinguished vertebrate paleontologist Michael J. Benton's latest book, "When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction Of All Time", is a long overdue popular account of the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, the end Permian extinction of approximately 251 million years ago. Other customers have complained that this book only devotes less than a quarter of its text to the Permian extinction. However, Benton does an elegant job describing the rise of a uniformitarian view of geology in the 19th Century (One major omission is not citing Scottish geologist James Hutton, who can be regarded correctly as Charles Lyell's intellectual precursor with respect to uniformitarianism.) which was eloquent expressed and defended by Charles Lyell in "Principles of Geology", his influential text on geology which helped shaped the careers of other distinguished scientists, most notably Charles Darwin. Next Benton gives a mesmerizing account of the career of Scottish geologist Roderick Murchison, who coined the name Permian for a suite of rocks found in the Ural Mountains of Russia. These lengthy digressions are important - and will become apparent to the astute reader - once Benton describes the Permian mass extinction.

The second third of the book discusses the nature of mass extinctions, describing why paleontologists were inclined originally to think of mass extinctions as the result of apparent bias in sampling of the fossil record, not as real events denoting substantial loss of the Earth's biodiversity. Benton devotes much space to discussing possible scenarios for the end Cretaceous mass extinction, noting that that the asteroid impact theory proposed by Luis Alvarez, his son Walter, and their colleagues at Berkeley is the one accepted now by scientists. And he notes how ecosystems recover following a mass extinction, noting some of the important work done by ecologists and paleontologists in their analyses of recent ecological data as well as the fossil record.

In the final chapters Benton describes what he thinks did happen at the end Permian mass extinction, offering a plausible scenario for this event (However, he dismisses a probable impact scenario which may be more likely in light of current understanding of planetary impacts, most notably the work done by the Alvarez team and others for the terminal Cretaceous impact.). And he gives a thorough overview of man's negative impact on current biodiversity, noting that this could be yet another important extinction in Earth's history. Students of paleontology, historians of science and the general public will find this fine book a splendid overview of mass extinctions, especially the Permian extinction. It is one of the best recent books on the history of geology and paleontology that I have come across lately.

This book's title implies that it is primarily about the end Permian extinction, the largest known to science. In fact, direct discussion of that event occupies less than twenty per cent of the text. Much of the rest is a history of scientific ideas about the history of life and the great extinctions, with considerable attention to the individuals who advocated them. While the book is written in a readable style, the reader may be frustrated by the author's cautiousness in drawing conclusions about the Big One. The book ends with a discussion of what Benton calls the Sixth Extinction, caused by human activity, implying that it is comparable to the one at the end of the Permian. While this has become fashionable in popularized books about science, we haven't come near the Permian extinction level - yet.