"On Extinction" is a strange hybrid of travelogue and natural science, misted over with a wanderer's lonesome observations of a world in the process of disappearing.
Unfortunately, those strange, twisted structures don't "dodge extinction"; some are being dismantled.
The pair travelled worldwide, hunting for Kakapos (flightless parrots that look like over-cooked brussel sprouts), Aye Ayes (nocturnal Lemurs that look a bit threadbare) and other strange creatures on the brink of extinction.
Eventually they moved to the steppes of Central Asia, where they continued to thrive — until the 20th century, when these strange-looking antelopes began flirting with extinction.
At the heart of the controversy is the human intervention that has shaped the animal's history, from the brink of extinction around 1900 to their strange modern status.
This past summer I found myself traveling with a strange man straight out of Melanie Challenger's book "On Extinction".
Long after we are gone, science fiction movies about our impending extinction will instruct whoever comes next that we were a strange, neurotic species indeed.
The story of the monstrous Neades, she said, "contains the germ of the idea of extinction" long before Cuvier; these fossils were interpreted as the remains of strange, oversized creatures that lived before humans, and were no more.
Some strange creatures cropped up in the wake of one of Earth's biggest mass extinctions.
