School of Biology Adjunct Professor Joseph Mendelson recently published a paper in the American Scientist on global amphibian extinctions. He reflects on his personal experience witnessing multiple extinctions of amphibian species from fully protected parks and reserves in Mexico and Central and South America.

As an amphibian taxonomist, he describes the sobering reality of "discovering" species new to science after they have already gone extinct-the discovery being made from the shelves of natural history museums, not in their former cloud forest habitats. These discoveries resemble paleontology, but they are so recent that the term does not fit. Mendelson suggests the term "Forensic Taxonomy" instead. Dr. Mendelson also is Curator of Herpetology at Zoo Atlanta and current President of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. He co-teaches Georgia Tech Biology undergraduates a research methods course at Zoo Atlanta.