A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals

I've been doing research on animals that have gone extinct since European exploration and colonization in the Americas. It is nearly impossible to find descriptions and illustrations for many extinct animals let alone find the two in the same place. Tim Flannery and Peter Shouten have travelled all over the world, examined museum and collection specimens, collected writings and oral descriptions, and compiled them into text and beautiful illustrations depicting these lost animals. This book is amazing-from the breathtaking illustrations to the excerpts from letters discussing first-hand encounters with wildlife that is now lost. I can only hope these guys will continue their research and publish another book. This book is a must have for the wildlife enthusiast, the teacher, and children.

I found this to be an excellent, but simple book. I say it in this way in that it is one that is a quick overview of the species involved, but also one that makes me appreciate what has been lost. It's not an in-depth biological study nor is it intended to be. It's also has two sides in that it shows the wonder of nature and how amazing it is, but by the end of the book, it left me depressed. So much has been lost and this book makes me appreciate it. It give me the motivation to do what I can, however little that is, to perhaps help prevent this in the future. I read this book several time and every time I went, "Wow!"

"A Gap in Nature" is a truly extraordinary book. It gives details of many species that are lost to us forever. The illustrations are beautiful. Each species that is covered has a matching picture, its range, and reasons why it became extinct. The human species is mostly to blame for the loss of many of these creatures with destruction of habitat, over hunting, and introduction of disease and predators. Some of the species like the Dodo bird, the Great Auk, the Passenger Pigeon, and the Carolina Parakeet are well known whereas others are not known. It's very sad in a way. We have been able to save the California Condor and the Whooping Crane, but have probably lost the Dusky Seaside Sparrow, the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, and Bachman's Warbler in recent years. This book is excellent, but really only covers the tip of the iceberg when it comes to species we've lost forever.

We've often heard about the loss to our world due to extinction. Flannery and Schouten put "faces" to this loss. These 'Ghosts of Species Past' represent just a handful of the things that we have directly or indirectly caused to disappear from the Earth. Many books try to give us an idea of the loss through descriptions and stories. What sets this book above the rest are the illustrations by Schouten. Often working with only skins, parts of the animal, or old drawings, he has created hauntingly beautiful illustrations of what these animals might have looked like were we to see them in their natural habitats. And that is what you will take away from this book, more than just the scope of loss, but the physical beauty and diversity that these animals represent. And that is a shame. Many of these animals were only seen a few times, so the information on them is sketchy, yet Schouten breathes life into these ancient corpses. The book's message will stay with you. Let's hope that we can cut back on contributing to the next volume in the world today.

"A Gap In Nature" by Tim Flannery and illustrated by Peter Schouten. Sub-titled, "Discovering the World's Extinct Animals." Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001.When my grandchildren visit, they often ask me the classical question of how I can read a book without pictures. Not with this book! The pictures are the chief attraction of "A Gap In Nature". Organized by the Australian writer, Tim Flannery, this book collects in one place a tribute to the many species that have become extinct in the recent past, since the first voyage of Columbus. The artist, Peter Schouten, spent years drawing life-sized portraits for each of the 103 animals, for the beautiful illustrations of this book. Schouten's brilliant, full color illustrations are a delight to look at, and will keep the attention of even a three-year-old boy. My grandson asked, "What's that?" as we turned the pages and then, "Is that a mouse?" when looking at the "Pig-footed Bandicoot" on pages 96-97. No, I found out that the Bandicoot was not a mouse, but rather an Australian marsupial, about "...the size of a kitten". I had never seen such an animal before, and that is the poignant message of this book. The beautiful pictures show animals that no longer exist. The author, Tim Flannery, has previously expounded his thesis that the arrival of humankind heralded the extinction of so many different animals on so many different continents and islands. For example, in his recent book, "The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples", Flannery ascribes the destruction of the mammoths, mastodons and giant sloths to the arrival of the first humans in North America some 13,200 years ago, in what he terms "a megafauna barbecue". In "A Gap In Nature", Dr. Flannery does not have to dwell too deeply on the culpability of humans in this worldwide extinction. It is enough to sit there and sadly turn page after page, picture after picture, of so many beautiful animals, which no longer exist.