Most of the time, the rate of extinction is slow and steady.
Since Cuvier's seminal insight, scientists have come to understand that countless species have fallen by the evolutionary wayside as part of the normal course of things. And the mysterious, big-toothed creature – which he dubbed "mastodon" – would turn out to be just one of its many victims. In his study, Cuvier had come nearer than any of his predecessors to perceiving the biological guillotine of extinction. So what were they? Cuvier argued that they belonged to an espèce perdue, a lost species. While the remains plucked from the Kentucky marsh were elephant-like, they were not exactly of an elephant. While puzzling over what he saw, Cuvier made an intellectual leap that upended a piece of conventional wisdom as old as Aristotle: the assumption that the animals we know today are the only animals Earth has ever known. By then, the king's collection had become the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and Longueuil's curious specimens had come to the attention of a 25-year-old zoologist named Georges Cuvier. Jump to 1795 – not long after the French Revolution abruptly and violently eliminated the French monarchy.
Reaching New Orleans after many mishaps, Longueuil shipped the strange finds off to France and their ultimate destination, the personal collection of King Louis XV. When presented with the teeth, tusk and bone, he was sufficiently impressed to take them along for the rest of the expedition.
The commander of the company was Charles le Moyne, the second Baron de Longueuil, and governor of Montreal. The marsh had apparently ensnared all manner of beasts unfortunate enough to have wandered into its pungent and muddy waters – among them a creature with 10-pound teeth, an enormous tusk and an elephantine thigh bone. A few miles away, they found a strange marsh full of animal bones. When the troops stopped to camp downriver from present day Cincinnati, some of the natives headed off into the woods to hunt. In 1739, a company of French soldiers together with a few hundred of their Native American allies were heading down the Ohio Valley en route from New France to Louisiana when they came across a sort of natural time capsule.
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