Mass Extinctions: Processes and Evidence

In 1985, when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Dave Raup and I attempted, perhaps with some naivete, to compile a complete bibliography of papers that had been published since 1979 on mass extinctions and their possible association with large body impacts. It had been six years since the initial findings by Alvarez and others that revolutionized the field and two years since Raup and Sepkoski presented evidence of a 26 million year periodicity in the post-Paleozoic mass extinction record. Our intention was to publish the bibliography in annotated form; we thought that such a list might be useful to scientists struggling to keep up with the increasingly multidisciplinary flow of information. The number of publications was growing as more and more scientists entered the fray, but we still managed to put together what we thought was a reasonably comprehensive list through 1984. Unfortunately, it soon became evident that, at just about that time, the publication rate was entering its exponential growth phase. Any published bibliography on the subject would have been grossly outdated before it was even typeset, and we had no choice but to run up the white flag. So much for good intentions. While the rate of publication on mass extinctions no longer appears to be increasing as dramatically as it did in the mid 1980's (this can be confirmed by conducting a year by year GeoRef search on the subject), papers continue to be published at an impressive clip. The mass extinction industry appears to be in good health. Into the tsunami descends this edited volume, Mass Extinctions: Processes and Evidence. There is already more being published on mass extinctions than most of us can possibly keep up with, and there are many choices for readers interested in semi-comprehensive overviews (e.g., Chaloner and Hallam, 1989; Sharpton and Ward, in press) or indepth reviews of particular events (e.g., Erwin, 1989). So why bother reading this book? In my view, there are two compelling reasons: 1) Generally, the authors have done conscientious jobs of summarizing the literature relevant to the subjects of their respective chapters, most of which focus on individual mass extinctions. Thus, the reader is brought up to speed on various issues and debates surrounding each extinction. 2) Perhaps unintentionally, the book does an excellent job of illustrating that, despite the remarkable progress of the past decade, we still have a long way to go with respect to the acquisition of relevant data and the development of a coherent agenda to help guide this research. The first three chapters provide overviews of basic themes relevant to