Sixty-five million years ago the dinosaurs were destroyed in a mass extinction that remains unexplained. Out of that devastation, new life developed and the world regained its equilibrium. Until now. Employing radically new perspectives on the science of life, scientists are beginning to uncover signs of a similar event on the horizon: the end of man.

In telling the story of the last sixty-five million years, Michael Boulter reveals extraordinary new insights that scientists are only now beginning to understand about the fossil record, the rise and fall of species, and the nature of life....

On the Origin of Species was built upon the young Charles Darwin's observations of the natural world when he circumnavigated the globe as a "gentleman naturalist" on the HMS Beagle. But work on his masterpiece did not begin until five years after his return when he moved into Down House with his family in Kent, England, where he would live for the rest of his life. For almost twenty years, the garden at Down House was both an inspiration and a laboratory to Darwin. In the orchard, he conducted experiments on pollination. He built a dovecote where he could breed new...