EXTINCTION REVEALED: TRACING THE LEGACIES OF LOST SPECIES
Past eventFri., April 17, 2026, 9 a.m.–5:30 p.m.–Sat., April 18, 2026, 9 a.m.–2:30 p.m.
General: $50; Society of Fellows, Members & Readers: $30 (students and research fellows free) Optional lunch: $20 (each day)
Haaga Hall
Funding provided by USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and The Dibner Research Fellow & Exhibition Endowment.
Key Details
- Conference registration is good for both days and includes general admission to The Huntington.
- Lunch reservations close on April 13 at noon. A limited number of lunch tickets will be available for purchase at the conference.
- Doors to the conference hall open 30 minutes before registration.
For questions about this event, email researchconference@huntington.org or call (626) 405-3432.
Top image: John James Audubon (1785-1851), The Birds of America: from drawings made in the United States and their territories ..., 1840-44. | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Conference Schedule
Schedule is tentative and subject to change.
Friday, April 17, 2026
9 a.m. | Registration and coffee
9:45 a.m. | Welcome and remarks
- Susan Juster (The Huntington), Daniel Lewis (The Huntington), David Bottjer (USC)
10 a.m. | Session 1: Origins
Extinction was first discovered in the rocks. Through fossils, biotic crises, and the stratigraphic record, paleontology revealed that disappearance is woven into the history of life itself. This session explores the deep-time origins and recurring dynamics of Earth’s great losses.
- Regan Dunn (La Brea Tar Pits)
“When Do Forests Go Extinct — and When Do They Not? Floral Collapse, Resilience, and Reorganization Across Earth’s Biotic Crises” - David Bottjer (USC)
“Evidence from Past Mass Extinctions: Managing the Current Extinction Crisis” - Mairin Balisi (Alf Museum of Paleontology)
“In the Shadow of the Saber-tooth: How Megafaunal Extinction Shaped Urban Biodiversity”
12 p.m. | Lunch
1 p.m. | Session 2: Transformations
Extinction is not merely an end; it is a force of transformation, an engine of planetary and conceptual change. Climatic upheavals, ecological ascendancies, and shifting epistemologies have continually reconfigured both the living world and the ways humans make sense of its losses.
- Gísli Pálsson (University of Iceland)
“The Birth of Unnatural Extinction: The Last of Its Kind in Epistemic Space” - Joseph Parker (Caltech)
“The Rise of Ants: A Lens for Understanding the Modern Biosphere” - Katherine Hill (Independent Scholar)
“The Many Lives of Glacial Extinction”
3 p.m. | Break
3:30 p.m. | Session 3: Eradications
Despite the advances we have gained in species survival, we have still retained an uncanny ability to do the wrong thing. We know how to love, but as a species, we may be better at hating, ignoring, or simply not caring. If sorrow is about grief for what we love, eradication is about contempt for what we do not.
- Mark Barrow (Virginia Tech)
“The Alligator’s Allure: How Florida Embraced a Giant Man-Eating Predator” - Peter Alagona (University of California, Santa Barbara)
“Is the California Grizzly Extinct?” - Daniel Lewis (The Huntington)
“Undesirables: Human Efforts to Eliminate Unwanted Species”
Saturday, April 18, 2026
9 a.m. | Registration and coffee
10 a.m. | Session 4: Resurrections
At the same time that we’ve considered eradicating species, we’ve also found ways to bring the past alive, and in a highly active way, fought back against extinction by resurrecting essential aspects of lost species with new insights and information.
- Priya Moorjani (University of California, Berkeley)
“Resurrecting the Past: Genetic Footprints of Extinct Ancestors” - Kevin Burgio (Consulting Biologist)
“Extinction in Two Acts - The Life and Death of the Carolina Parakeet” - Sean Lahmeyer (The Huntington)
“Back from the Brink: Saving Plants from Extinction”
12 p.m. | Lunch
1 p.m. | Roundtable discussion
2:30 p.m. | Concluding Remarks