No Turning Back

First lines

Everybody knows what extinction is.

About this book

Nearly every species that has lived on earth is extinct. The last of thedinosaurs was wiped out after a Mount Everest-sized meteorite slammedinto the earth 65 million years ago. The great flying and marine reptiles areno more. Before humans crossed the Bering Land Bridge some 15,000 yearsago, North America was populated by mastodons, mammoths, saber-toothedtigers, and cave bears. They too are MIA. The passenger pigeon, once themost numerous bird in North America, is gone forever.In No Turning Back, renowned naturalist Richard Ellis explores the lifeand death of animal species, immortalizing creatures that were driven toextinction thousands of years ago and those more recently. He documentsthose that were brought back from the brink, and most surprisingly, he revealsanimals not known to exist until the twentieth century — an antidoteto extinction.

Themes & subjects

About the author

Richard Ellis

2 April 1938

Richard Ellis is an American marine biologist, author, and illustrator. He is a research associate in the American Museum of Natural History's division of paleontology, special adviser to the American Cetacean Society, and a member of the Explorers Club. He was U.S. delegate to International Whaling Commission from 1980 to 1990. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and his murals can be seen in the Denver Museum of Natural History, the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, and Whaleworld, a museum in Albany, Western Australia. He is the author of more than 100 magazine articles, which have appeared in leading magazines such as National Geogra…