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Article: Death, taxes, and extinction: an example from the dinosaurs.(Digging Dinosaurs)
- Article from:
- National Forum
- Article date:
- June 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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As Benjamin Franklin quipped in a letter to a colleague, certainties in life are few, notably death and taxes. When Franklin wrote this in 1789, the renowned French paleontologist, Georges Cuvier, was soon to inform us of another certainty of existence, namely extinction. He did this by comparing the teeth of two extant elephants with those of fossil elephants and their relatives. The fossil mastodons and mammoths were so different from the two living species that he concluded that they no longer existed. Thus, just as surely as the grim reaper and the taxman will eventually pay each of us a visit, mother nature constantly winnows the millions of species inhabiting Earth. ...