Book Reviews Holocene Extinctions. Samuel T. Turvey, editor. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. 352 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-953509-5 (hardcover) $99.00. Everyone knows something about late Pleistocene extinctions, the loss of such things as the mammoth, mastodon, and sabertooth cat. Fewer know that the Holocene, or the past 10,000 (radiocarbon) years, has seen an equally astonishing variety of extinctions. While the causes of the late Pleistocene losses remain the focus of heated debate, most Holocene extinc- tions are uncontroversially seen as the result of varied human impacts: hunting, the introduction of exotic predators and competitors, and other forms of modification of the landscape. This book is the first to provide a general survey and analysis of these more recent losses. It is, at the same time, a valuable and enduring contribution to historic biogeography and conservation biology. The book begins with a superb introduction to the nature of late Pleistocene and Holocene environments and the methods used to learn about them (by Anson Mackay), and then turns to a review of late Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions (by Samuel Turvey). Mackay’s contribution is a model of breadth, depth, and concise readability but some of the statements Turvey makes are jarring. He claims, for instance, that most paleontologists accept human involvement in the late Pleistocene losses, a statement which is probably not true but, more importantly, for which he offers no support. Similarly, while he criticizes the logical circularity of those who make the “assumption that the great majority of now-extinct species survived until the arrival of humans” (p. 26), he makes precisely that assumption when he asserts that “the late survival of M. balearicus reflects the late colonization of the Gymnesic Islands” (p. 28), or, in a later chapter, that the timing of extinction of an organism might be inferred from the timing of human arrival (p. 207). Logical problems aside, Turvey provides a knowl- edgeable global survey of Holocene extinctions in both continental and island settings. This survey is followed by two synthetic tables. The first, by Turvey, proves last occurrence dates for 225 mammalian species that were lost during the Holocene; the other, by Tommy Tyrberg, does the same for birds. These tables represent an enormous contribution in and of themselves; nothing like them has ever appeared before. Most of us who have worked intensively on prehistoric extinctions have focused on vertebrates. Wendell Haag takes a very different direction, providing a synthesis of the extinctions of Holocene freshwater mussels in North America, with an emphasis on the midwestern and southeastern United States. Haag’s data show that 5000 years of often intense prehistoric human predation on mol- lusks caused no extinctions there and little change in the species composition of molluscan assemblages. Extinction waited until the 1920s, following massive habitat destruction due to the building of dams. While no taxa appear to have become extinct in this region prehistorically, at least 26, and perhaps over 40, have now been lost, with another 31 species imperiled. While the late Quaternary has seen a broad variety of terrestrial extinctions, there is little evidence of such for marine contexts. This issue is tackled in a review by N. K. Dulvy, J. K. Pinnegar, and J. D. Reynolds of Holocene extinctions in the sea. It is good that they spend most of their time talking about historic extinctions, since their control of the prehistoric record is abysmal. They assert, for instance, that the earliest evidence for marine harvesting by people dates from between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago when the earliest such evidence dates from about 170,000 years ago (Marean et al. 2007). They also claim that “the earliest hunter-gatherers collected shellfish opportu- nistically, and hunted slow-moving terrestrial reptiles” (p. 132) but, without defining what is meant by the “earliest” hunter-gatherers, this statement has no meaning. Neandertals, for instance, were highly effective hunters of large mammals. It is, accordingly, a relief to turn to R. P. Scofield’s nuanced examination of Holocene procellariiform extinctions. This global review reveals that nearly 60% of species within this order have undergone popula- tion-level extinctions during the Holocene, with introduced predators, habitat destruction, commercial fishing, and pollution playing the major role. Schofield also reviews the impacts of those losses, in Integrative and Comparative Biology, volume 50, number 4, pp. 683–693 ß The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. All rights reserved. For permissions please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/50/4/683/648020 by guest on 20 January 2022