Mammoth : The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant

This book is a very interesting discussion of three topics: 1) Why did the mammoths go extinct? 2) Is it possible (and desirable/ethical) to bring back the mammoths via cloning or interbreeding with modern elephants? 3) How did the demise of the mammoth and similar large mammals affect the vegetation and climate of the areas in which they lived (in this case Siberia). Russian scientists theorize that when the mammoths no longer grazed and churned up the ancient grasslands, the vegetation changed completely, into the tundra-wasteland that it is today. Overall a very enjoyable short book that does not try to puff up the page count with hundreds of pages of irrelevant material. TMR

Mammoth: THe Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant written by Richard Stone is a book about adventure, but not just your oridinary adventure. The Adventure here is about the unearthing of giant animals from the Pleistocene Era... Giant Wooly Mammoths in the permafrost of Siberia. This is a very provocative book as the science is beautifully clear.The Wooly Mammoth roamed Europe, Asia and North America and grew to huge proportions, but later became extinct and all that we know of their existance is being uncovered by some very good scientific research. Now, a new generation of explorers has taken up the challange, to find out more about the mammoth and the life and times that existed during their lifetimes. Armed with ground-penetrating radar, GPS, and helecopters the large expanse of Siberia is begins to yield some interesting finds and the clues that go along with more and more information.There is promiss in this book that once again the mammoth may live... how you say can this happen... well through DNA and cloning. This book takes you on a rigerous adventure through frontiers of science. Yes, theoretically it can be done, but this book examins both the profound philosophical questions about the risks and morality of executing these efforts. Liken to "Jurassic Park," you say.. and you would be correct.Theories exist as to why the mammoth did out and became extinct... one of which is the overchill theory as the Earth became increasingly cooler the food supply for the mammoth became less and less forage for the animal, next the psychological change of being penned in by dense forest and glacier. Mammoth were used to living in the Northern cooler climates as is evidece in the finds of today. So much so, as there are finds in the small islands of the Arctic Ocean. This book tells a riveting adventureus tale that is fascinating to read. The prose flows well as you, the reader, are now in the hunt for the mammoth. The text treats the reader to a review of the wide variety of information Stone has learned about the Mammoth while doing research.

This book is enjoyable to read and packed with information. Richard Stone does a great job with the mostly scientific material while keeping it entertaining with descriptions of travel to Siberia. This book is an excellent primer on mammoths--their biology, their fossil record, the history of their discovery by humans, the theories of their extinction--and it has a bibliography if you would like to know more. But it is more than that. In discussing current research on mammoths, he covers paleontolgy, arctic exploration, Russian history, genetics, molecular biology, biogeography, and anthropology, and handles all of them equally well. The center piece of the book is the expedition to unearth the Jarkov mammoth and thaw it slowly to find out how intact it is (you would be surprised how many intact frozen mammoths have gone on record as having been left to the wolves to eat or fed to dogs, or just left to rot--what a waste!). The book ends with some uncertainty about how valuable the Jarkov mammoth will be, but that did not distract me from finding this a very satisfying book.One small thing that would have made this book better is a graphic depiction of a timeline of the Pleistocene. I have trouble keeping my dates straight.

Richard Stone's "Mammoth" opens the mind's eye to vivid and unexpected worlds of discovery - past, present, and future, from Pleistocene hunting parties who pursued the woolly colossus for sustenance, to 21st-century scientists who seek the still fugitive hunk of flesh from which, they hope, they will find themselves able to extract an unadulterated archive of genetic material; to those dreamers who would not only resurrect a creature that nature and history have conspired to bury beneath the snow but also to reconstruct around it a "Pleistocene Park," an entire ecosystem of the kind in which the ancient animal flourished. What, indeed, caused the mammoth's disappearance in the first place? Stone asks. Was it climate change, for instance, or was it overhunting - or was it some horrible "hyperdisease" to which, if we extract the behemoth from its icy sepulchre, we might expose ourselves? But "Mammoth" is not just a natural history; it is also a front-seat adventure that takes us on a trek of thousands of kilometers, from locales as diverse as Tokyo and North Africa to the vast whiteness and bone-chilling cold of the Siberian Arctic. It is an expedition that marries gleaming Western technologies to creaky post-Soviet gear and traverses the chaos and corruption of today's Russia. It is a quest, too, that brooks the terror of indigenous peoples that the latter-day grave-robbers about whom we read might expose themselves - and all of us, in their heedless arrogance - to some ancient curse or unpredictable calamity.

I liked this book because, as every great book should, it stimulated my curiosty and imagination. It made the little-known,long extinct animal come to life. I could picture Dima, the baby mammoth, as he lay dying in a frozen Siberian steppe 40,000 years ago, starving without his mother's milk. I could also feel the bitter-cold howling winds as explorers were searching for mammoth remains.The book raises questions to which there are no answers yet, such as how did mammoths become extinct and could they be "brought back" with the help of modern technology. This makes one ponder the ethics of cloning and then breeding pre-historic animals in today's environment.Last but not least, the book made me realize that even in this age of ever-present internet there are still true hands-on adventurers out there, determined and dedicated individuals who are conquering new frontiers in search of unknown and little-known phenomena.And, of course, there are writers to write about it.