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No fabled creature of the Pleistocene Era has a more powerful hold on the imagination than does 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 and even feasted on mammoth tongues. Eager to uncover more clues to this mystical 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. Science writer Richard Stone follows two teams of explorers -- one Russian/Japanese, the other a French-led consortium -- as they battle bitter cold, high winds, supply shortages, and the deeply rooted superstitions of indigenous peoples who fear the consequences of awakening the "rat beneath the ice." Stone travels from St. Petersburg to the Arctic Circle, from the North Sea to high-tech Japanese laboratories, as he traces the sometimes-surreal quest of these intrepid scientists, whose work could well rewrite our planet's evolutionary history. - Publisher.
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Subjects
Mammoths, Cloning, Paleontology, Pleistocene Geologic EpochPlaces
Russia (Federation), SiberiaTimes
PleistoceneEdition | Availability |
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1
Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant
2003, Fourth Estate Ltd
Paperback
1841155187 9781841155180
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2
Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant
September 17, 2002, Basic Books
Paperback
in English
0738207756 9780738207759
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WorldCat
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3
Mammoth: the resurrection of an Ice Age giant
2002, Fourth Estate
in English
1841155179 9781841155173
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4
Mammoth: the resurrection of an Ice Age giant
2001, Perseus Pub.
Hardcover
in English
0738202819 9780738202815
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aaaa
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5
Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant
September 18, 2001, Perseus Pub.
Hardcover
in English
0738202819 9780738202815
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-227) and index.
Maps on lining papers.
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The Physical Object
ID Numbers
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Scriblio MARC recordLibrary of Congress MARC record
marc_openlibraries_sanfranciscopubliclibrary MARC record
Library of Congress MARC record
Excerpts
Aeroflot helicopter as we flew low across the Taimyr Peninsula
in Siberia, but my view from a small, round passenger window was
crystal clear. In the late-afternoon sun, treeless hills cast
bluish shadows, and ice-packed rivers that snake through a vast
frozen tundra glittered like golden blasts of dragon fire. A
herd of shaggy reindeer, startled by the whop-whop-whop of the
strange orange bird overhead, kicked up powdery snow and
sprinted by the last larch trees of the Ary Mas reserve, the
northernmost forest in the world.
I felt a twinge of anxiety as we approached the barren
wilderness site where the veteran Arctic explorer Bernard
Buigues and his team had been dropped off two days earlier. I
had grown fond of Buigues, watching this modern woolly mammoth
hunter in action one week in Siberia in late October 2000. A few
days earlier, I had been with Buigues when he flew into a remote
village. The indigenous Dolgans who live there - most dressed
in western-style winter clothes but a few in traditional
reindeer skin jackets and chaps - gathered around and greeted
him warmly. Buigues often brings them sacks of flour, shoes for
the children, and other supplies to ease their hardscrabble life
on the tundra - although on this trip, organized in a rush, he
came empty-handed. He asked how they were faring, and the look
in his kind blue eyes showed he genuinely cared. Buigues also
wanted to know where he could find skeletons of woolly mammoths
and - the greatest prize of all - a frozen carcass.
The Dolgans were silent at first. They fear disturbing the
remains of a creature revered by the older generations. Yet they
divulged to this Westerner, his blond hair graying at the
temples, the locations of a few recently spotted bone piles.
Buigues had won their trust, but he knew that the Dolgans would
never help him unearth a mammoth. Doing so, they believed, would
put their lives and their families' lives at risk.
Chapter 1: Raising the Dead
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