Notes
Introduction
Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction.
“Global Extinction Rates: Why Do Estimates Vary So Wildly?,” Yale E360, accessed September 13, 2021, https://e360.yale.edu/features/global_extinction_rates_why_do_estimates_vary_so_wildly.
Webster and Erickson, “The Last Word?” 386.
Webster and Erickson.
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Nijhuis, “What Do You Call the Last of a Species?”
Jørgensen, “Endling, the Power of the Last in an Extinction-Prone World.”
Nijhuis, “What Do You Call the Last of a Species?”
Jørgensen, “Endling, the Power of the Last in an Extinction-Prone World.”
“Last of the Dusky Sparrows Dies,” accessed April 13, 2021, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1987/06/17/974787.html.
“Tiny Tree Snail Finally Creeps to Extinction,” accessed May 14, 2021, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1996-02-01-9602020105-story.html.
Yong, “The Last of Its Kind.”
Smith et al., “Cooperation and the Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Storytelling,” 1853.
Barthes and Duisit, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative,” 237.
Barthes and Duisit, 264.
Jørgensen, “Endling, the Power of the Last in an Extinction-Prone World.”
Van Dooren, Flight Ways, 9–10.
Jørgensen, “Endling, the Power of the Last in an Extinction-Prone World.”
1. Species and Starts
Douglass S. Rovinsky, email interview with author, February 9, 2022.
Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger, 18–19.
González Zarandona, Murujuga, 53.
Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger, 23.
Paddle, 23.
“National Museum of Australia—Separation of Tasmania,” accessed May 17, 2021, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/separation-of-tasmania.
“Extinction of Thylacine | National Museum of Australia,” accessed September 13, 2021, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/extinction-of-thylacine.
Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger, 26–29.
Lawson, The Last Man, 20.
Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger, 32.
Paddle, 32.
“The Thylacine Museum—History: Persecution (Page 6),” accessed September 14, 2021, http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/history/persecution/persecution_6.htm; “National Museum of Australia—Extinction of Thylacine,” accessed May 17, 2021, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/extinction-of-thylacine.
“Classified Advertising,” Hobart Town Courier, September 17, 1831, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4202126.
Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger, 169.
Eric Guiler, “Cultural Advice,” in Australian Dictionary of Biography, accessed May 22, 2021, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/roberts-mary-grant-8228.
Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger, 189.
“Extinction of Thylacine | National Museum of Australia.”.
Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger, 196.
Jørgensen, “Presence of Absence, Absence of Presence, and Extinction Narratives,” 53–54
Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger, 198.
Sleightholme, “Confirmation of the Gender of the Last Captive Thylacine,” 953–56; Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger.
Wilkins, Defining Species, and Wilkins, Species.
Phaka et al., “Folk Taxonomy and Indigenous Names for Frogs in Zululand, South Africa,” 17.
Ross, “‘What’s That Called?,’” 123.
Wilkins, Defining Species, 193.
Wilkins, 194–97.
Morton, Realist Magic, 29.
Turvey, Witness to Extinction, 176.
Fuller, Lost Animals.
Gander, “10 Species Still around That Might Not Be in 2030”; Kaitlin Solimine, “World’s Largest Freshwater Turtle Nearly Extinct,” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/130703-china-yangtze-giant-softshell-turtle-animal-science; Crane, “Chasing the World’s Most Endangered Turtle”; CeCe Sieffert, email interview with author, January 27, 2022; Chris Lasher, email interview with author, January 27, 2022; Lindsay Wickman, email interview with author, January 30, 2022.
Rachel Nuwer, “Sudan, the Last Male Northern White Rhino, Dies in Kenya,” The New York Times, March 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/science/rhino-sudan-extinct.html.
Van Dooren, “Extinction,” 173–74.
2. Extinctions and Endings
García-González, “New Holocene Capra Pyrenaica (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Bovidae) Skulls from the Southern Pyrénées.”
Bicho et al., “The Upper Paleolithic Rock Art of Iberia.”
The history and story of Celia builds upon conversations with Adam Searle, a cultural geographer, and his publications. Searle has spent years conducting ethnographic research tracing the ibex’s footsteps in the Pyrenees. Searle, “Spectral Ecologies.”
Searle, “Hunting Ghosts,” 520.
Searle, 521.
Searle, “Spectral Ecologies.”
Church and Regis, Regenesis.
Searle, “Spectral Ecologies.”
García-González, “New Holocene Capra Pyrenaica (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Bovidae) Skulls from the Southern Pyrénées,” 1029–30.
Church and Regis, Regenesis., pp 136.
Searle, “Anabiosis and the Liminal Geographies of De/Extinction,” 13.
Searle, “Hunting Ghosts”; Agence France-Presse, “Ibex Population Thrives in French Pyrenees a Century after Being Wiped Out,” The Guardian, September 3, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/04/ibex-population-thrives-in-french-pyrenees-a-century-after-being-wiped-out.
Searle, “A Tale of Two Bucardo.”
Adam Searle, Zoom interview with author, June 18, 2021.
Heise, Imagining Extinction, 38.
Searle, “A Tale of Two Bucardo.”
Levi-Strauss, Totemism, 89.
Gessica Sakamoto Martini, Zoom interview with author, February 14, 2022.
Propp and Zipes, The Russian Folktale, 286.
Nakawake and Sato, “Systematic Quantitative Analyses Reveal the Folk-Zoological Knowledge Embedded in Folktales.”
Barthes and Duisit, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative,” 256.
“Irony, n.,” OED Online, accessed February 13, 2022, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/99565.
“Poetic, adj. and n.,” OED Online, February 13, 2022, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/146532.
TallBear, “An Indigenous Reflection on Working beyond the Human/Not Human.”
Clayton, “Aesop, Aristotle, and Animals.”
Wimpenny, Aesop’s Animals, 56.
Hartigan, Aesop’s Anthropology, 54.
Hartigan, 53.
Kolbert, “The Lost World.”
Thomas Jefferson, “Memoir on the Megalonyx, [10 February 1797],” accessed February 27, 2022, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-29-02-0232.
Giaimo, “Thomas Jefferson Built This Country on Mastodons”; Bressan, “Thomas Jefferson’s Patriotic Monsters.”
Kate Wiles, email interview with author, March 25, 2021.
OED, s.v., “extinction.”
Wiles interview.
OED, s.v., “extinction.”
Wiles interview.
Eleanor Parker, email interview with author, March 31, 2021.
Headley, Beowulf, lines 2261–64, emphasis added.
Reynolds, “Beowulf’s Poetics of Absorption.”
Parker interview.
David Petts, email interview with author, April 13, 2021.
Nicholls, Lonesome George.
“Galápagos Tortoises, Facts and Photos,” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/facts/galapagos-tortoise; Turtle Conservation Coalition, “Turtles in Trouble: The World’s 25+ Most Endangered Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles” (IUCN SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, Turtle Conservancy, Turtle Survival Alliance, Turtle Conservation Fund, Conservation International, Chelonian Research Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Global Wildlife Conservation, 2018), https://www.iucn.org/content/turtles-trouble-worlds-25-most-endangered-tortoises-and-freshwater-turtles; Hennessy, On the Backs of Tortoises.
Hennessy, On the Backs of Tortoises, 6
Hennessy, 7, 15
Jørgensen, Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age, xvi.
Probyn-Rapsey, “Anthropocentrism,” 48, 51
Monsó, “Animals Wrestle with the Concept of Death and Mortality.”
3. Charisma and Character
Fuller, Lost Animals, 73.
Cokinos, “The Carolina Parakeet Reminds Us to Do Better.”
Saikku, “The Extinction of the Carolina Parakeet,” 9.
Saikku; Fuller, Lost Animals, 73.
Courchamp et al., “The Paradoxical Extinction of the Most Charismatic Animals,” e2003997.
Jepson and Barua, “A Theory of Flagship Species Action,” 95.
Ducarme, Luque, and Courchamp, “What Are ‘Charismatic Species’ for Conservation Biologists?,” 8.
Courchamp et al., “The Paradoxical Extinction of the Most Charismatic Animals,” 6.
Cunningham et al., “Mortality of Endangered Snails of the Genus Partula,” 20.
“1,500,000-Year Slow Road to Eternity Is Over for a Tiny Snail,” Evening Standard, January 31, 1996, 12.
Robin McKie, “Precious Escargot: The Mission to Return Tiny Snails to Pacific Islands,” The Observer, September 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/28/return-of-native-tiny-partula-snail-key-south-pacific-wildlife.
Kurt Auffenberg and Lionel Stange, “Snail-Eating Snails of Florida, Gastropoda,” University of Florida IFAS Extension, Entomology and Nematology Department, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, January 1, 2001, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341887445_Snail-Eating_Snails_of_Florida_Gastropoda.
“1,500,000-Year Slow Road to Eternity Is Over for a Tiny Snail.”
McKie, “Precious Escargot.”
Ferber, “Bug Vanquishes Species.”
Andrew A. Cunningham and Peter Daszak, “Extinction of a Species of Land Snail Due to Infection with a Microsporidian Parasite,” 1140.
Dan Ferber, “Bug Vanquishes Species,” 215–16.
“Tiny Tree Snail Finally Creeps to Extinction”; “World’s Last Polynesian Tree Snail Dies at London Zoo,” The Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1996, B12.
“1,500,000-Year Slow Road to Eternity Is Over for a Tiny Snail.”
McKie, “Precious Escargot.”
“Two Extinct-in-the-Wild Partula Snail Species Returned to the Wild for First Time in 25 Years,” Zoological Society of London (ZSL), accessed September 14, 2021, https://www.zsl.org/conservation/news/two-extinct-in-the-wild-partula-snail-species-returned-to-the-wild-for-first-time; “Partula Snail Conservation Programme,” Zoological Society of London (ZSL), accessed August 18, 2021, https://www.zsl.org/conservation/regions/oceania/partula-snail-conservation-programme.
San Juan, “Orientations of Max Weber’s Concept of Charisma,” 270.
Courchamp et al., “The Paradoxical Extinction of the Most Charismatic Animals,” 1.
“Charism | Charisma, n.,” OED Online, accessed September 14, 2021, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/30721.
“Charism | Charisma, n.”
Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 359.
San Juan, “Orientations of Max Weber’s Concept of Charisma,” 272.
Jepson and Barua, “A Theory of Flagship Species Action.”
Courchamp et al., “The Paradoxical Extinction of the Most Charismatic Animals,” 4.
Jones, Cycads of the World.
Mabye, The Cabaret of Plants.
Boglárka Erdei et al., “First Cycad Seedling Foliage from the Fossil Record and Inferences for the Cenozoic Evolution of Cycads,” 20190114; Jones, Cycads of the World; “Meet Durban’s Famous Cycad Family,” South Coast Herald (blog), accessed September 14, 2021, https://southcoastherald.co.za/297604/meet-durbans-famous-cycad-family/.
Robert Krulwich, “The Loneliest Plant In The World,” NPR, May 10, 2011, https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/10/136029423/the-loneliest-plant-in-the-world; Robert Krulwich, “Does the Loneliest Plant in the World Need Help?,” National Geographic, February 1, 2016, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/does-the-loneliest-plant-in-the-world-need-help.
“Meet the Plant Undateables | Kew,” accessed August 24, 2021, https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/plant-undateables-loneliest-plants-in-world; “Encephalartos Woodii Sander,” Plants of the World Online, accessed September 14, 2021, http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:297146-1.
“Encephalartos Woodii Sander,” Plants of the World Online.
“Encephalartos Woodii | PlantZAfrica,” accessed September 14, 2021, http://pza.sanbi.org/encephalartos-woodii.
“Encephalartos Woodii | PlantZAfrica.”
“Wood Like to Meet: The Loneliest Plant in the World | Kew,” accessed September 14, 2021, https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/wood-like-to-meet-the-loneliest-plant.
“Meet the Plant Undateables | Kew.”
“Encephalartos Woodii | PlantZAfrica.”
Devin Griffiths, Zoom interview with author, September 9, 2021; Griffiths, “Great Exaptations.”
“Meet the Plant Undateables | Kew.”
Conclusion
Searle, interview.
Jørgensen, interview.
Barthes and Duisit, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”; Nakawake and Sato, “Systematic Quantitative Analyses Reveal the Folk-Zoological Knowledge Embedded in Folktales.”
Andy Bodle, “How New Words Are Born,” The Guardian, February 4, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2016/feb/04/english-neologisms-new-words.
Sibusiso Biyela, “Decolonizing Science Writing in South Africa,” The Open Notebook, February 12, 2019, https://www.theopennotebook.com/2019/02/12/decolonizing-science-writing-in-south-africa/.
Wild, “African Languages to Get More Bespoke Scientific Terms.”
Biyela, “Decolonizing Science Writing in South Africa”; Sibusiso Biyela, Zoom interview with author, May 18, 2021.
Biyela, interview.
Biyela, interview.
Carruthers, “Conservation and Wildlife Management in South African National Parks 1930s–1960s”; Gissibl, “Colony or Zoological Garden?”
Fortunate Mafeta Phaka, Zoom interview with author, June 2, 2021.
Biyela, interview.
Sibusiso Biyela, interview with author, September 2, 2021; Biyela, interview with author, May 18, 2021.
Ialenti, “The Art of Pondering Distant Future Earths.”
Van Dooren, “Extinction,” 178.
Martin, “UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating,’” United Nations Sustainable Development (blog), accessed August 10, 2021, https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report.
Van Dooren, “Extinction,” 172–73.