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Elephants + the Idea of Extinction
Elephants helped establish a new way of thinking about life and death of species on Earth.
Strange fossils dug from American soil looked elephant-like in some ways and different in others. Two hundred years ago, French naturalist Georges Cuvier compared these fossils with elephant bones. He determined that the fossils were from another species he ultimate named the mastodon, and concluded it was "lost" in the past. These observations led him to a bold idea: species could go extinct. |