In a masterful epic of timeless mystery and ripped-from-the-headlines scientific intrigue, James Rollins, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sigma Force series, takes mankind to its endpoint, to a fate written in rock and ice in an event known as The Sixth Extinction - A remote military research station sends out a frantic distress call, ending with a chilling final command: Kill us all! Personnel from the neighboring base rush in to discover everyone already dead-and not just the scientists, but every living thing for fifty square miles is annihilated: every animal, plant, and insect, even bacteria. - The land is entirely sterile-and the blight is spreading. - To halt the inevitable, Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma must unravel a threat that rises out of the distant past, to a time when Antarctica was green and all life on Earth balanced upon the blade of a knife. Following clues from an ancient map rescued from the lost Library of Alexandria, Sigma will discover the truth about an ancient continent, about a new form of death buried under miles of ice. - From millennia-old secrets out of the frozen past to mysteries buried deep in the darkest jungles of today, Sigma will face its greatest challenge to date: stopping the coming extinction of mankind. - But is it already too late?