My current book project The Book of Birds: A Memoir of Extinction, combines ethnographic fieldwork with ornithologists and archival research to understand the ways “touching extinction” transforms scientific research and the lives of those who conduct that research. While focused on the extinction of birds, this project is motivated by a thought experiment which asks: What happens when we reframe “evolution” as a form of memory. A species, after all, is the product of remembered adaptation and resilience over time. In extinction, a species and its genetic history become forgotten in the creative unfolding of biological life, even as its traces are archived in places like the Earth’s strata or natural history museums. This project is supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.