Mammoth: The Resurrection Of An Ice Age Giant [Paperback]

Richard Stone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2002

In this adventure-filled narrative, science writer Richard Stone follows two groups of explorers--one a Russian-Japanese team, the other a French-led consortium--as they battle bitter cold, high winds, and supply shortages to carry out their quest. Armed with GPS, ground-penetrating radar, and Soviet-era military helicopters, they seek an elusive prize: a mammoth carcass that will help determine how the creature lived, how it died--and how it might be brought back to life.A riveting tale of high-stakes adventure and scientific hubris, Mammoth is also an intellectual voyage through uncharted moral terrain, as we confront the promise and peril of resurrecting creatures from the deep past.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park introduced readers to the once improbable notion that, thanks to advances in genetic science, dinosaurs could be brought back from the grave. Richard Stone's Mammoth offers a kindred scenario: the establishment of a "Pleistocene Park," in which long-extinct creatures like the mammoth, saber-toothed tiger, and woolly rhino could be resurrected and given sanctuary.

This is not a science-fiction vision, we learn from science journalist Stone's absorbing journey into recent prehistory. Already, scientists from Russia, Canada, the United States, and other nations are studying the possibility of restoring a stretch of northern Siberia to its Pleistocene condition, thereby creating what they call a "mammoth steppe" populated by bison, Yakutian horses, and elephants--and one day, perhaps, creatures such as the woolly mammoth, genetically "summoned from the world of the dead." The materials are readily available, Stone writes, in the form of DNA-bearing "muscles and ligaments and fat" found in mammoths now buried in arctic permafrost. Whether those remnants can be made to bring back to life what Siberians call the "rat beneath the ice" is another question, but it's one that many scholars are busily exploring.

While looking into what he calls a "watershed in efforts to study lost ecosystems," Stone provides a lively natural history of the mammoth and evaluates conflicting theories on its extinction. His book makes for a memorable journey into unknown scientific territory--and a glimpse at a possible future that is surpassing strange. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In March 2000, 10 million Discovery Channel viewers watched scientists airlift a 23-ton chunk of Siberian permafrost containing a still-frozen woolly mammoth carcass. Stone, Science magazine's European news editor, describes the banal events preceding the extraordinary excavation: a young boy sees a tusk protruding from the ground; his father and uncle unearth and sell the tusk to an arctic explorer, whose excavation plans conflict with the local Dolgan people's reverence for the earth; the red tape-tangled Russian government cooperates. Stone interviews the top mammoth experts and documents the most significant excavations of the past two centuries. These once abundant "great shaggy beasts," cousins of modern Asian and African elephants, suddenly went extinct at the end of the Great Ice Age some 11,000 years ago. Three well-balanced chapters explore the primary, and often conflicting, theories on mammoth extinction: shifting weather patterns caused by climate change, overhunting by humans and a "hyperdisease" passed from humans to mammoths. Certain scientists, Stone says, not only want to understand the mammoth's disappearance they also hope to bring the beast back to life. He recounts the pioneering, controversial efforts of some Japanese scientists, who hope to recover enough well-preserved tissue to create either an elephant-mammoth hybrid or a mammoth clone. Stone professes his own belief that, someday, "woolly mammoths will once again walk the earth." Exploring the environmental ramifications of bringing extinct animals back to life, and invoking Jurassic Park, Stone describes an ambitious plan to restore the prehistoric mammoth steppe habitat in Siberia. Although sometimes digressive and overly detailed, his account offers a provocative look at the world of today's mammoth hunters.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 242 pages
• Publisher: Perseus Publishing (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738207756
• ISBN-13: 978-0738207759
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,635,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mammoth primer and more, July 3, 2002

By 

Matthew Taylor (Rockville, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Mammoth: The Resurrection Of An Ice Age Giant (Paperback)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant, November 2, 2001

By 

Coffee Time Romance "Coffee Time Romance" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mammoth: The Resurrection Of An Ice Age Giant (Paperback)

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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant, January 19, 2003

By 

Joe Zika "Khemprof" (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Mammoth: The Resurrection Of An Ice Age Giant (Paperback)

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.