Rock Doc

Not too long ago I rewrote my will. There’s nothing like such a project to remind me of my mortality. But imagine not just your own individual death, but the finality of the death of all the members of your species.

You’ve likely heard of the mass extinction that removed the non-avian (non-bird) dinosaurs from the face of the Earth some 65 million years ago. There have been other periods, too, of enormous “die offs” in Earth history. And even apart from times of mass extinction, some species are always going belly-up. In short, most species that have ever lived are now extinct. As I like to sa...