Mammoth by Richard Stone
This title describes a walk with a dinosaur, as two teams of scientists race to bring back to life the long-extinct woolly mammoth, using DNA from a frozen mammoth discovered in a cliff face in Northern Siberia. Advances in medical and scientific technology mean that the impossible is now theoretically possible: a mammoth can be cloned from a frozen, long-dead mammoth corpse. But it's not easy. No one knows for sure how long frozen mammoth sperm keeps. Elephant sperm keeps well, but the mammoth has been extinct for at least 4000 years. But the mammoth remains a vividly real image: huge, with great curving tusks it is both utterly familiar and completely unknown. The discovery of a frozen mammoth in a crumbling Siberian cliff face attracted two teams of scientists, one French, one Japanese, to attempt to recreate it. At issue is both a moral and a technical question: is the preservation of species through improved reproductive biology to be applauded? Does this extend to reviving extinct species? And, if so, which should tread on the Earth's surface again, defying their Darwinian extinction? Combining an adventure story with a depiction of contemporary scientific powers, the book is both a drama and cautionary tale of two teams of pioneers as they approach the moment when they can play God: they will decide if the woolly mammoth walks again.
'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
Richard Stone is the European bureau chief of Science magazine. He has written for Discover, the Washington Post, the Moscow Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781841155180 |
| ISBN 10 | 1841155187 |
| Title | Mammoth |
| Author | Richard Stone |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding type | Paperback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 2003-03-03 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |