Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant.RICHARD STONE Stone reports from Siberia's Taimyr peninsula, where about 600 woolly mammoth skeletons lie buried under each square kilometer of permafrost permafrost, permanently frozen soil, subsoil, or other deposit, characteristic of arctic and some subarctic regions; similar conditions are also found at very high altitudes in mountain ranges. . There, ancient huts constructed of mammoth bones hold tools and sculptures crafted from the animals' tusks. The author follows two teams of researchers scouring scouring characterized by scour. scouring disease a colloquial name for secondary nutritional copper deficiency. the region for less-abundant frozen carcasses of the animals. The scientists' goal is to gather viable mammoth DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. . One group hopes to determine the cause of the animals' extinction, which could be infection with an Ebola-type virus. The other team more grandly hopes to use the DNA to clone a mammoth or impregnate im·preg·nate v. 1. To make pregnant; to cause to conceive; inseminate. 2. To fertilize an ovum. 3. To fill throughout; saturate. an elephant egg with mammoth sperm. Stone blends the action of discovery with the substance of science to create an intriguing look into mammoth research. Originally published in hardcover in 2001, Perseus, 2002, 242 p., b&w plates, paperback, $15.00. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion