Stephen J. O'Brien

“Left alone, the Florida panther would be remembered as a textbook exercise on how to go extinct while your abundant and vociferous…

— Stephen J. O'Brien

“The evidence of cheetah genetic monotony would only grow. Bob Wayne, a talented postdoctoral fellow in our lab, examined cranial measurements and…

— Stephen J. O'Brien

“Field biologists studying large and charismatic animals wanted to know if their own species had genetic problems. I listened carefully to stories…

— Stephen J. O'Brien

“Within a few months Mitch Bush, head veterinarian at the National Zoo, and David Wildt, a young reproductive physiologist working as a…

— Stephen J. O'Brien

“Over the past sixty years a rather impressive assembly of respectable taxonomists and evolutionary biologists have tried to unseat the biological species…

— Stephen J. O'Brien

“Taxonomy, also called systematics, is the science-based hierarchical classification of the world's species. The area had traditionally been an obscure academic discipline…

— Stephen J. O'Brien

“It seems a shame that less than 1 percent of all the species that ever lived survive today and that only about…

— Stephen J. O'Brien

“[Giant northern elephant seals] were presumed extinct as late as 1912 when a group of eight seals was spotted on Guadalupe Island…

— Stephen J. O'Brien

“The cause of these great extinctions, the most extensive in the seventy-million-year record for mammals, is a mystery. The two prevailing guesses,…

— Stephen J. O'Brien