Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant - Softcover

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 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

'I was all but impelled to go and search for mammoths myself: except that I can't stand the cold.' Anthony Daniels, Sunday Telegraph

'Entertainingly told…A splendid account.' Financial Times

'A nicely judged mix of adventure, history and scientific instruction.' Guardian

'The mammoth was the first animal to be proven extinct. Will cloning technology ever reverse that brute absence? Richard Stone thinks it will…Entertaining.' New Scientist

'Part history of our knowledge of the mammoth, part travelogue to Siberia and part account of modern scientific schemes to resurrect the mammoth by means of genetic engineering…always readable.' Anthony Daniels, Sunday Telegraph