Chapter 3

Chapter 3 goes over the five main extinction events, the progress of evolution from the Permian to the Triassic, and then explains background extinction and its causes. This chapter had some new information that was new to me; for example, I had no idea what a moa was, or how New Zealand used to be dominated by massive birds. It was surprisingly fascinating; not so long ago, creatures that sound more like something out a video game than actual animals roamed the lands where the Lord of the Rings trilogy was shot. Then, as humanity is wont to do, we promptly devastated their habitat and hunted them to near extinction-but so it goes. Survival of the fittest and all that. An Edgar Allan Poe reference caught me by surprise, and made me chuckle. This chapter also introduced a conflict to the plot; apparently, the "Squinches" are facing some sort of genetic crisis. I'm interested to see how this develops.