The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myth, and History (Hardcover)

by Claudine Cohen (Author), William Rodarmor (Translator) "La Fuite devant un mammouth (Fleeing from a mammoth) is the title of a painting you can see at the Musee des Antiquites Nationales at..." (more)
Key Phrases: fossil unicorn, paléontologie philosophique, diluvial explanation, United States, North America, Boucher de Perthes (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American
The mammoth, Cohen writes, shares traits both of the elephant and the teddy bear. She tells the story of this extinct creature as a means of telling the story of paleontology. Both stories read well. Cohen, who teaches the history of science at the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences in Paris, examines the possible reasons for the extinction of the mammoths and considers the possibilities for reviving the species through cloning. By giving life to extinct species, she writes, paleontology would surpass itself and move from being a science of death to truly being a science of life.

Editors of Scientific American

From Booklist
As paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould says in his introduction to this marvelous view of Ice Age elephants, the mammoth is the totem animal of vertebrate paleontology. The remains of these enormous animals have fascinated people for centuries, and were among the first fossils to be recognized as fossils. The fact that they lived concurrently with our ancestors, who pictured them in carvings and cave paintings, as well as the discoveries of frozen mammoth carcasses in Siberia, makes this animal more immediate and more accessible than the dinosaurs. Cohen, a French professor of the history of science, uses the study of the mammoth to reveal the history of paleontology itself. The use of DNA extracted from mammoth tissues found frozen in the permafrost has further refined our knowledge, and given hope for possible cloning of mammoths. Extensive notes and a bibliography round out a well-illustrated, exhaustive view of one of the best-known extinct animals. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226112926
• ISBN-13: 978-0226112923
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,333,444 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History of Science more than Mammoths, November 6, 2004

By	Dr. Susan G. Van Pelt (Greenfield, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book was not really what I had in mind, but I ended up enjoying it anyway. I was looking to find out more about mammoths, but the book only touched on the actual natural history of mammoths in a limited way. There were so many other revelations, though: people finding mammoth bones at one time thought they were "sports of nature", spontaneously produced by the generative capacities of the earth and not representing any living creature. Mammoth bones are the origin of many giant myths. In Siberia, mammoth bones would seem to burst up from the ground with the thaw, leading to a belief that they were from a burrowing creature that would die on exposure to light. The book was dense and slow reading, but I've found myself relating things I learned in this book to many people since finishing it. I guess it goes to show you sometimes find good things by accident...