Mammoth: The Resurrection Of An Ice Age Giant
by By Stone, Richard
Category: Science , Paleontology

No fabled creature of the Pleistocene Era has a more powerful hold on the imagination than the woolly mammoth. Cave paintings of the giant beasts hint at the profound role they played in early human culture: Our Ice Age ancestors built igloo-shaped huts out of mammoth bones, sewed their clothing with mammoth hair, even feasted on mammoth tongues.Eager to uncover more clues to this vanished prehistoric age, explorers since the time of Peter the Great have scoured Siberia for mammoth remains. Now a new generation of explorers has taken to the tundra. 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.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. This daring band of 21st century mammoth hunters includes the eccentric French explorer, Bernard Buigues, whose Arctic tourism company flies wealthy travelers to the North Pole and whose partner, Christian de Marliave, once retraced Shackleton's journey across South Georgia Island; the quirky Japanese scientist, Kazufumi Goto, who is determined to clone a mammoth, and the Dutch customs official, Dick Mol, an amateur fossilist who is dead set against cloning. Each of these explorers must gain the trust of the indigenous Siberians, many of whom fear the consequences of awakening the "rat beneath the ice."