This author is not a literary figure but rather a professor of palaeoenvironments. His research interests lie in sedimentology, mass extinction events, palaeontology, marine anoxia, and basin history.
Extinction has occurred throughout the history of life, and nearly all the species that have ever existed have now disappeared. In this Very Short Introduction, Paul B. Wignall looks at the causes and nature of extinction events, what makes a species vulnerable, and the debates in modern science of the role of climate and humans.
[Wignall] presents a sound examination of an 80-million-year span, which began nearly 260 million years ago, that is considered by scientists to have been the most extreme extinction event in Earth's history . . . . [A] great example of scientific sleuthing.--Publishers Weekly