The Last Extinction

The story behind Dr. Gerta Keller’s world-shattering scientific discovery that dinosaur extinction was NOT caused by asteroid impact, but rather by volcanic eruptions on the Indian peninsula, a discovery that highlights today’s existential threat of greenhouse gasses and climate change—and one that sparked an all-out war waged by the scientific establishment.

Part scientific detective story, part personal odyssey, The Last Extinction is the definitive account of a radical theory that has reshaped how we understand our planet’s past and, as we face the possibility of a sixth extinction, how we might survive its future.

For decades, the dominant theory held that an asteroid impact caused the dinosaurs’ extinction. But Princeton Geologist Dr. Gerta Keller followed the evidence to the truth: Deccan volcanism, a series of massive volcanic eruptions in India, triggered a long-term climate catastrophe and Earth’s fifth mass extinction. Her findings upended the field and ignited a bitter feud in modern science—what became known as the “Dinosaur Wars.”

Raised in poverty on a Swiss farm and told she could never be a scientist, Keller defied expectations, earning her PhD at Stanford and battling her way into the highest ranks of Geology, eventually becoming a Professor of Paleontology and Geology at Princeton University. Her refusal to back down in the face of ridicule, sabotage, and sexism makes her story as thrilling as her science, which offers urgent insight into today’s climate crisis: Sustained planetary upheaval—not a single cataclysmic event—can plunge the planet into an age of death.