Harald Stümpke. The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades. New York: Natural History Press, 1967.
Originally published in German in 1957 by zoologist Gerolf Steiner.
Once held by: George Poinar Jr. (entomologist)
In the science fiction film Jurassic Park (1993), an animated sequence, “Mr. DNA,” explains how InGen, the fictional bioengineering corporation, recreated dinosaurs by extracting blood from mosquitoes trapped in amber. The science behind this was inspired by the work of entomologist George Poinar Jr., whose personal copy of The Snouters we see here. The Snouters is a known “biological hoax” presenting studies on alleged newly discovered shrew-like species found in 1941 on a remote island in the South Pacific. This work is now regarded as a classic of the “speculative evolution” genre.
Ege Kökel. The Unextinct Dodo Project. Türkiye & Austria: Self-published, 2019.
Once held by: Ege Kökel (speculative designer and researcher)
In 2019, I contacted designer Ege Kökel after encountering Dodo in the Room, her master’s thesis project at University of Applied Arts Vienna. At the time, I was gathering works for a house show I curated, Human Nonhuman: 10 Books on Interspecies Interactions. Since Ege’s book existed only as a prop, I invited her to produce a second copy for the show, later included in my first public exhibition, Interspecies Futures [IF] at Center for Book Arts (2021). Designed as a binder by a fictional bioengineering company offering resurrected companion dodos (of various traits from plumage and size to sociability, loyalty, and exercise needs), the book materialized an alternative reality in which de-extinct species coexist with humans. Meant as a provocation, the book would soon prove eerily prescient.
Once held by: Anonymous (Colossal Biosciences employee)
De-extinction is the process of “resurrecting” extinct species via genetic engineering. In 2021, two years after Ege Kökel’s artists’ book The Unextinct Dodo Project, the Texas-based bioengineering startup Colossal Biosciences was founded by Harvard geneticist George Church (hailed as “the father of synthetic biology”) and tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm. Backed by venture capital, Colossal’s original promise was to bring back the dodo bird and the woolly mammoth to help restore endangered ecologies. Critics argue that Colossal’s project could trigger unpredictable, catastrophic ecological imbalances.
Major investors include Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) and Thomas Tull, former CEO of Legendary Entertainment and executive producer of the Jurassic World franchise.
“Extinction will soon be a thing of the past.” – Colossal Biosciences
