December 2002
Jen Crispin
nonfiction
Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant by Richard Stone
Honestly,
I don't think that I'd ever given the wooly mammoth all that much thought,
before this year. Of course when I was five I was obsessed with dinosaurs,
as nearly all children that age are, but I don't remember that obsession
ever spilling over to anything with hair - except maybe the saber tooth
tiger.
Which is why it's fairly remarkable that I've found myself reading about
mammoths twice this year. Somehow mammoths have become the new great sexy
beast when I wasn't looking. First the mammoth rated pretty much its own
chapter in The
Ghost With Trembling Wings by Scott Weidensaul. Then I picked
up Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant by Richard Stone,
which obviously made the mammoth its main character.
There actually is a reason for all of this sudden interest. Two of them,
to be precise. The first was an attempt by Arctic explorer Bernard Buigues
to excavate a mammoth entire, while still in its protective block of frozen
tundra soil. If successful, such an attempt would allow the removal of
the frozen cube to a controlled environment where the mammoth could be
defrosted more slowly, with less damage to the tissues that had been preserved
for thousands of years.
Of course the advantage of such a well-preserved specimen is not just
a lovely museum exhibit, but it also would hold great promise for eventually
cloning the mammoth, an endeavor that Japanese scientist Akiri Iritani
is poised to pursue. This is the second reason for the new interest in
mammoths. Cloning a large extinct animal has so far been limited to fantasy
worlds like Jurassic Park. The recent success of cloning sheep
inspires hope in these researchers, but the obstacles to cloning a mammoth
would be huge even if intact mammoth cells were discovered.
Perhaps more realistic is the alternative route pursued by Japanese researcher
Kazufumi Goto, who hopes to find intact mammoth sperm which he could use
to impregnate an elephant. The possibility of creating a hybrid has a
big advantage in that a sperm cell does not have to be alive in order
to impregnate an egg. However there are a lot of obstacles in this path
as well.
The most interesting thing about Mammoth is the quandary such research
creates. If one day it were possible to create a mammoth clone or hybrid,
should we do so? What are the moral and ethical implications in
raising an extinct species from the dead? Especially an extinct species
whose habitat no longer exists on this Earth. What would be the point?
Just to prove that we can? And would we just create a single individual,
or try to recreate a sustainable population? Given the difficulties in
creating even a single mammoth, the odds against being able to create
enough individuals with sufficient genetic diversity to maintain that
population seem insurmountable at the present time. Would it be more tragic
to see the mammoth flicker and die out for a second time, or would the
glory of seeing such a great beast walk the earth again be worth the work?
There are people in Mammoth who have great faith that one day there
will exist a park in Siberia where mammoth will roam with buffalo and
reindeer once more. It is certainly true that science has brought about
many wonders that no one believed would ever come to pass. However I do
not believe that I will ever see a live mammoth in my lifetime. Personally,
I find the idea of a living museum exhibit to be a bit disturbing. While
the quest for the mammoth has led to some interesting science, we live
in a world in which the majority of species alive today are uncatalogued
and unidentified. If these species were to go extinct tomorrow no one
would even notice, yet their absence could be potentially more devastating
than more charismatic megafauna like the mammoth.
As for the book itself, Richard Stone writes with a clear and logical
style. Although he is the European News Editor of Science magazine,
he doesn't even suffer from magazine writer's disease too badly (where
each chapter feels more like a feature in a magazine rather than an integrated
chapter in a larger book.) I also appreciated that although Stone brings
up the moral dilemmas inherent to the research he discusses, he never
beats you over the head with the fact that they are dilemmas, nor his
opinion of them. Rather, the reader is left free to make up their own
mind. Of course, the reader may also choose not to commit to 215 pages
on a single extinct mammal, for which I would not blame them. In that
case, let me recommend
to them The Ghost with Trembling Wings as a well-written treatment
of vanished and vanishing species.
Mammoth: The Resurrection of a Stone Age Giant by Richard Stone
Perseus Publishing
ISBN: 0738202819
256 pages
