Extinction : Our Fragile Relationship with Life on Earth

Extinction is an attempt to understand, through photographs and text, the factors threatening numerous species of animal and plant with extinction and to explore man’s relationship with life on Earth.

Schlossman combines unique photographs of specimens from the Field Museum in Chicago with informative and insightful text about the species themselves, reasons for decline and the conservation efforts in place to prevent further extinction. The specimens revealed in this book are not on public display and the only way to see many of them is through these photographs, the result of ten years cataloguing key species from the museum’s zoology and botany collections. The images lead the reader to the species’ stories, promoting a greater understanding of mankind’s stewardship of life on Earth at a critical time in history. Extinction illustrates the crucial importance of museum collections for conservation, education and research. The United Nations recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services makes the set of issues affecting biodiversity even more topical. The book has been designed to have pages with black backgrounds for extinct species and white backgrounds for species nearing extinction. A yellow flag highlights conservation successes, which are interspersed throughout. The conservation success stories highlight the positive work that is happening and the potential there is to prevent the extinction of these and other species.