The Golden Frogs
The golden frogs native to Panama around the city of El Valle de Antón which is situated in a million-year-old volcanic crater is the very first of many animals to which the reader is introduced. The frogs were also the author’s introduction to what would become the obsession leading to the composition of this book. Where once this species of frog were too numerous to even begin counting, by the time the author arrived, the population was already clearly dwindling. In this way, the golden frogs become the symbol of awareness and understanding of the coming sixth extinction which is expected to commence with amphibians and like creatures.
The Great Barrier Reef
The arrival of Captain Cook as the first eyes of white Europeans to fall upon the Great Barrier Reef sets in motion an inexorable and unbroken series of human intervention among the coral that has made this the most famous reef on the planet. What a 21st century seamen following in the tracks of Cook would see today is something that would be almost unrecognizable to Cook and his crew. The Great Barrier Reef becomes, then, the book’s central symbol for the devastation of living things at the hands of man, whether intentionally destructive or otherwise.
The American Mastodon
With the discovery of fossilized remains of the mastodon in America and the subsequent close study by George Cuvier, the entire history of the world changed. It was Cuvier’s study of the mastodon that led him to propose a theory so outlandish as to have never really been considered seriously before: that entire species of animals could actually die out and disappear forever. The mastodon comes to symbolize the very concept of extinction.
Amazonian Army Ants
Like Sherlock’s dog that doesn’t bark in the night when it should, the Amazonian army ants become important symbols because of what they don’t do instead of what they do. The author waits with great anticipation for rarely seen sight of the march of the army ants. The confusion left in the wake of the ants not marching is not limited to just the human observers; the birds who have learned when and where to arrive in order to enjoy a massive feast are also flummoxed. This incident serves to make the army ants—or rather the absence of ants where there should be countless numbers—a symbol of how evolutionary leaps are dependent upon long periods of routine which when upset disturbs the entire balance of nature. What is stopping the ants from marching is ultimately stopping the birds from eating which ultimately works it way up the entire food ladder; dispersed over epochal time frames, the ultimate ultimate result of the ants not marching could conceivably be radical evolutionary changes in one or more species at their point along this ladder.
Iridium
Iridium is a rare element on earth, but is bountiful in meteorites. The 21st discovery of iridium in the clay separating a layer of limestone rich in fossils form a layer of limestone with a dearth of fossils by geologist Walter Alvarez brought back to life a theory on mass extinction which had long been discredited. This discovery essentially proved that a global cataclysm could speed up the normal rate of evolution and extinction through Alvarez’s contention that the iridium clay separating the two distinct layers of limestone resulted from a massive collision between earth and a meteorite. This evidence forwards iridium as the book’s dominant symbol of the resurrection of a theory once proposed by Cuvier and subsequently ridiculed by the entire scientific community. Including the 20th century community which ridiculed Alvarez’s theoretical postulation.
