Lately as I’ve perused the World Book Encyclopedia, several articles have intrigued me.  I’d like to gather some of my thoughts together here.

The coelacanth (SEE-luh-kanth) is a 5-foot-long fish that lived more than 300 million years ago.  Scientists have studied the fossils of these fish.  They supposedly went extinct ages ago.  Imagine their surprise when a live specimen was caught off the coast of South Africa in 1938.  Many more specimens have since been caught, indicating that there is a surviving population in the western Indian Ocean.

Also millions of years ago, throughout the world, there were large forests of many different kinds of sequoia trees.  All went extinct except for the redwood and the giant sequoia which both now survive only in California and southern Oregon.  Another sequoia, the dawn redwood, left many fossil remains, and was thought to have gone extinct 20 million years ago.  It grew in such widely scattered places as California, Greenland, Siberia, and Japan.  In 1941 a Chinese forester discovered a large dawn redwood growing in a remote valley in China.  Seedlings from dawn redwoods in China have been transplanted throughout the Pacific Northwest and southeastern Alaska, have survived, and are growing.

The discoveries of these two living specimens of extinct species were made in 1938 and 1941.  In 1944, another species, a magnificent bird, the ivory-billed woodpecker, went extinct.  The last one was shot in Louisiana that year.  The ivory-billed woodpecker was a 20-inch-long bird with a 30-inch wingspan, one of the largest woodpeckers in the world.  It lived in thick hardwood swamps and pine forests that had large amounts of dead and decaying trees in the southern U.S.  The male was a striking-looking black bird with a red crest on its head, white markings on its neck, back, and wings, and with an ivory-colored bill.

Ivory-billed woodpeckers mated for life.  The male and female both helped incubate their eggs.  He took the night shift from about 4:30 P.M. to 6:30 A.M. at which time it became the female’s turn.  They fed on insects and larva that they pried from under the bark of decaying trees.  Their drum was a distinctive single or double rap on the tree.

In 1971 two photos were taken of a living ivory-billed woodpecker.  Skeptics dismissed them as frauds.  The photos were grainy, and the bird was in roughly the same position in both photos, suggesting to the skeptics’ minds that the pictured bird may have been a mounted specimen.

This report, however, opened a quest that has been termed the “Holy Grail of ornithology.”  Cornell University, among other groups, sent teams of ornithologists to likely forests in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida over several seasons to try to find conclusive evidence of the ivory-bill’s continued existence.  Raps were recorded, sightings were made, a video was taken, and possible nest cavities and foraging signs were found.

These evidences sparked a rancorous debate, not unlike the debate that still swirls around the Book of Mormon.  Is the bird alive, or not?  Is the Book of Mormon true, or is it a fake?

In the case of the Book of Mormon, we have the book itself to present as evidence.  In the case of the ivory-billed woodpecker, there is still no definitive evidence.

Skeptics say that the data is insufficient.  The raps were likely gunshot echoes, they say.  The sightings were probably of the smaller but similar pileated woodpecker.  The video images are blurry.  The raps should be reconsidered in light of the phenomenon of duck wingtip collisions.  Such “faith-based” ornithology, they say, does a disservice to science.  The excitement of the ivorybill hunt “causes competent birders to see and hear things that do not exist.”

Fifteen sightings were made by members of the Cornell University team in 2004 in Arkansas.  Fourteen sightings and 300 recordings were made in the Florida panhandle.  Lacking solid evidence, the skeptics dismiss it all, but those who made the sightings stand by their testimonies.  Like Joseph Smith they can say, “I have actually seen a vision; and...why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen?”  (Joseph Smith-History 1:25).

I, for one, hold with those who continue to affirm that the bird still exists.  I hope for definitive evidence to come forth that will put the skeptics to silence.

I read about one other notable extinction upon which I’d like to comment.

William Shakespeare was “the greatest dramatist the world has ever known and the finest poet who has written in the English language.  (He) has also been the world’s most popular author.”  (World Book Encyclopedia, S-Sn, pg. 342).  He was famous in his own day (1564-1616), and his fame has risen dramatically ever since.

Shakespeare had three children—two girls and a boy.  The boy died at age 11.  The younger daughter had three boys who all died before she did.  The elder daughter had one child, Elizabeth, who bore no children.  The Shakespearean species went extinct when his granddaughter, Elizabeth, died in 1670—the last of his descendants.

Because of the Flood, wars, natural disasters, and the periodic need for the Lord to wipe out certain populations that became ripe in their wickedness, I maintain that the majority of people who have lived on this earth now have no living descendants.  Their lines have become extinct.

Much is being done to preserve species around the world that are in danger of extinction.  However, little thought, concern, or effort is being put forth to keep human lines from coming to an end.  Repentance and covenants are the keys in the conservation plans for human families.

I expect to have thousands, or a million, descendants who will participate in the Millennial wind-up scene.

On the other hand, without repentance and covenants, many of my contemporaries should consider themselves an endangered species.