A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals

This book is at once a lament for the lost animals of the world, and a paper ark to house them forever in human memory. Tim Flannery and wildlife artist Peter Schouten have commemorated 103 creatures which have vanished from the face of the Earth since 1492. Readers will be entranced by Peter Schouten's irresistible colour representations of the moa, the dodo and the astonishing Steller's sea cow which was eight metres long and weighed ten tonnes. Each painting is accompanied by Tim Flannery's evocative account of the vanished creature. Animals from every continent are represented in this homage to a lost Eden inhabited by American passenger pigeons, Tasmanian thylacines and African bluebucks. A Gap in Nature exhibition opened at the South Australian Museum in October.