-
- Are these hairy giants once again to share the Planet
with man? "A mammoth in every Zoo?"
-
- Will cloning techniques provide a closer look at a long-vanished
behemoth?
-
- Only in the last decade has a serious attempt been made
at restoring the mammoth to life once more. Unlike Jurassic Park and its
fictional attempt at repopulating extinct dinosaurs via the cloning lab,
today's technological successes have resulted in methods that may indeed
restore a less fearsome yet equally fascinating animal - not dead 65 to
200 million years but one that actually lived amongst men only four or
five thousand years ago.
-
- Different techniques will be applied to this effort than
the art- ificial egg sequence. What will be attempted will be the insertion
of extinct DNA into the embryo of a living cousin of the woolly mammoth
- the asian elephant, a close cousin of the earlier herbivore.
-
- FROZEN TREASURE
-
- An entire frozen mammoth was first discovered on the
shores of the Arctic ocean by a native Tungus Chief named Ossip Shamakov,
who spotted something large and dark inside a huge block of ice along a
riverbank where he'd been searching for ivory. The year was 1799, and
the last vestiges of a hot August had melted away enough ice to allow Shamakov
to see the dim outline of a very large animal under the glassy surface.
The lateness of the season did not allow for any further investi- gation
at that time, and when Shamakov returned the following summer he could
see the animal much more clearly, yet it was still unreachable.
-
- July 1801 saw him returning to the banks of the Lena
delta creek where he could now see a single tusk and a hairy shoul- der
protruding from the ice. Being a superstitious man, he remembered a tribal
prohibition against touching such animals and hurried away in fear to collect
the scattered tusks whose owners had safely become anonymous skeletons
millenia before. He was certain he'd not come close enough to get the
mysterious sickness touching a mammoth could cause.
-
- He did become sick that autumn, but the sickness ended
and he regained his health and his ambition to go back to the Lena delta.
Mammoth ivory was highly prized in those times, as it is now, and the
promise of 25 rubles for each tusk kept him from forgetting what he'd seen.
-
- Two summers later, he returned to the Siberian delta
area to see if the elephant-like animal were still there. It was. He
eventually helped remove the tusks with the help of an ivory dealer, who
made a crude sketch of it, which was then shown to a scientist.
-
- In 1806 the mammoth had partially been exposed on its
right side and naturally eaten by wolves and other predators. The left
side was still embedded in solid ice and in good condition. Ten workmen
hired by the scientist spent weeks carving it free and shipping the remains
to St. Petersburg in Russia, where it brought the princely sum of 8,000
rubles. This skeleton was mounted and is still found in the St. Peters-
burg Museum.
-
- MAMMOTH OR MASTODON?
-
- It was to be many decades before another such find was
made, although the bones and fossils of the once-furry animals which so
resembled the contemporary tusked elephant were to be found scattered in
areas as far flung as Mexico and Ohio, and were recognized as early as
1519 on the American continents.
-
- Mammoth and mastodon bones were considered to have belonged
to the same animals now considered to have become extinct by scientists
bold enough to believe one of 'God's creations' had been allowed to vanish
from the Earth. There were differences, however, mainly in the teeth of
some fossils, which fascinated such American luminaries as Benjamin Frank-
lin and Thomas Jefferson, whose hobbies included what we now term Paleontology.
-
- These differences in fossil teeth are the distinguishing
factor between mammoth and mastodon, for whereas mammoth teeth all had
raised parallel ridges in regular placement on their grinding molars; some
teeth found in America and Europe had nine lumpy knobs on the same teeth.
This difference led to the animals being classified as mastodons if the
teeth possessed these lumps, and considered not to be related to modern
ele- phants at all. The name 'mastodon' was coined in 1814 for the lumpy-toothed
carcasses.
-
- Both animals had roamed the continents far into the ranges
of the Arctic at apparently the same times...but the differences still
pose a small mystery to the scientist. (to the end of his life, Jefferson
insisted that they were all mammoths)
-
- These hairy herbivores had ranged the cold, dry areas
near most of the Northern portions of north America, Europe and Asia both
during and between glaciations. Areas near huge ice-age glaciers were
not wet and snowy as is thought, but are often dry and bitterly cold, as
glaciers by their very nature attract much of the available moisture in
the atmosphere to their own surfaces.
-
- Creatures with dense fur such as the small-eared mammoth
and mastodon, accompanied by enormous cave-dwelling bears, furred rhinoceros-cousins,
wolves and long-toothed cave lions, which are the reality behind stories
of sabretoothed tigers, giant deer and steppe horses were well fitted for
intense cold and ranged the dry, frigid plains in huge numbers. In death,
bones of these creatures were often carried into huge piles by glacial
runoff in the spring months, thus creating treasure troves of sturdy building
materials for early man dwel- ling in these inhospital climes, plus a seemingly
endless supply of ivory teeth and tusks for decorative purposes. Many
such sites exhibit burned bone in fireplace rings, although it takes a
very creative method of firebuilding to burn bone efficiently.
-
- Later, these immense bonefields puzzled explorers and
intri- gued fossil hunters. A number of these piled and tumbled bonebeds
turned up at the base of cliffs and were ascribed to natural stampeding
by wildfire or other sources; until the for- tuitous discovery of worked
flint points in close proximity to the carcass piles. Once a number of
these points had been recovered from between or even embedded into mammoth
bones there could be no other conclusion than that they'd been stampeded
by man. Some sites included distinct signs of butchering and dismembering
of the huge, shaggy animals.
-
- Another hint of the real predator, man, is that the very
name 'mammoth' is derived from 'mammut' or 'mountain of meat' which is
current in some steppes tribes. The hypothesis of man existing in these
long gone ages was further cemented in more recent times by the discovery
of carved representations of the tusked mammoth deeply incised into ivory
from the animal itself - thus proving that the ivory had not been recovered
from fossil beds, but from living animals.
-
- This discovery expunged the idea that giant humans had
walked the earth in prediluvian times, and began the process of establishing
the study of ancient beginnings for both animal and man as contemporaries
in a world far removed in climate as well as time. In addition they pushed
man's understanding of true antiquity for both back many millenia beyond
the supposed four to five thousand-year record of the Biblical scholar.
The old ideas died hard, but in the face of evidence it was understood
by most that both animals and human had existed for immensely longer periods
of time than had been thought.
-
- Glacial moraines and debris existed across the world,
and were easily discovered in even cursory studies of Europe from the polar
region to the southern Alps in obvious layered depos- its, the uppermost
of which were found to have receded a scant 11,000 years ago. Older layers
boasted datings of as much as 225,000 years previous to the most recent.
-
- These mile-thick ice sheets came and went in successive
periods, each providing optimum climatic conditions for huge herds of furry
creatures adapted to the cold, while the milder eras encouraged their migration
northwards for a time. In between these periods, more temperate and tropical
conditions encouraged the proliferation of non-furred animals who crowd-
ed into balmier areas of river, forest and plain. When these were once
again covered with ice, the huge migrations began again, each leaving its
evidence in fossil beds.
-
- It was in one of the epochs known to be close to glacial
that a jawbone and a group of worked tools was located, thus prov- ing
that man had populated Europe in the warmer period after the first ice
age, when mammoths still remained in the south.
-
- When the third glaciation occurred, 230,000 years ago,
humans seem to have discovered adaptive ways to stay and hunt the abundant
supply of meat roaming just beneath the towering glacial sheets or at the
edge of smaller mountain glaciers which dotted the land in lower latitudes.
An ice-free zone extended from modern France eastward and plentiful evidence
exists here of mammoth-hunting man living in rock shelters under deep overhangs
where he hunted and left decorated mammoth ivory carvings and representations
of many other animals they hunted in the treeless tundra.
-
- The fourth such icy surge saw in its retreat more modern
tools and artifacts crowding on its heels, proving that direct ances- tors
of contemporary humanity established strong beachheads, an ever-expanding
habitat which extended slowly to north and south, following the herds of
woolly prey.
-
- During this time of upheaval and repeated migration,
mammoth and other sub-arctic animals had nourished their human con- temporaries
with meat, hides, water-holding bladders and an easily usable store of
arching tusk and sturdy bone with which to create foundations and walls
of warm earth-covered lodges sheltering their occupants from the cold in
a treeless land.
-
- Man, once again, had demonstrated his innate ability
to adapt and thrive in severest weather and the most inhospitable of climatic
conditions.
-
- FOREST ELEPHANTS
-
- Like an earlier dominant species, the dinosaur, heavy-furred
mammoths seemed selected for extinction after the last retreat of the heavy
ice.
-
- Remnants, however, existed until the pyramids were under
construction, although totally isolated on a sub-arctic island and unseen
by man. 'Forest elephants' had long been reported in some areas into the
last of the 19th century, though contem- porary science pooh-poohed the
idea due to lack of evidence and the unsophisticated natives who provided
such sightings. It is the very lack of sophistication that lends credibility
to these reports, as natives with no formal education are hardly likely
to have knowledge of long-extinct species, nor their rarity and value to
a researcher. So we may have missed the experience of living specimens
by less than a century.
-
- Unlike the coelacanth, long thought extinct until a living
spec- imen was caught, mammoths are unlikely to be found roaming the landscape
undiscovered by modern satellite surveillance of the planet.
-
- FLYING MAMMOTH
-
- In 1999, a field paleontologist recovered what was, for
him, the 'holy grail' - a frozen male mammoth, in good enough condition
to completely study, then attempt to clone. This had been his goal since
1978 or 79.
-
- Larry Agenbrod joined an expedition led by Bernard Buigues
of France, partially funded by Discovery Channel, with the in- tention
of finding an adult bull mammoth in the condition necessary to provide
answers to a vast number of questions left unanswered by fossil record.
-
- For decades, such carcasses, appearing quick-frozen,
have turned up with often a sample of its regular diet of plants em- bedded
in its frozen jaws or in the ice near the body. Most were lost through
lack of technological expertise or equipment capable of preserving them.
-
- It became Agenbrod's obsession to join a veteran explorer
like Buigues, capable of leading such a venture. The idea also required
a source of funding sufficient to not only locate, but to re-locate a male
mammoth to some location where it could be slowly thawed and completely
studied.
-
- With Dutch paleontologist Dick Mol, Agenbrod set up an
am- bitious plan of attack. Siberian cooperation was secured, and a likely
hunt area found.
-
- Shortly after the plans came together, a family of reindeer
hunt- ers contacted authorities with news of a find. In mid 1997, onsite
confirmation was made and recovery methods outlined.
-
- RESCUING JARKOV
-
- The massive giant, more than 11 feet at his woolly shoulders,
weighed six tons and had been icelocked for an estimated 20,000 years,
since before the last glacial advance. The big bull, named Jarkov for
the reindeer-hunters who found him, lay deep in the ice. A convenient
icelab location lay just above him and a refrigerated building was built
over his frozen body at the dig site.
-
- When excavated in an iceblock, a team flew him 150 miles
to Katanga, where an ice cave dug by Stalin's gangs of convict laborers
had proven to be the perfect lab location.
-
- Thawing Jarkov is being done the modern way, with hair
dryers gently blowing the thick fur and 2 to 3 foot long guard hairs aside
to reveal intact skin, muscle and bone.
-
- Jarkov, unlike the smaller mammoths found in the island
location where they'd evolved into a dwarfed condition to survive, is a
full-sized mammoth which should provide the optimum best chance at cloning.
-
- Jarkov's body will yield more than just DNA, however,
as his condition is excellent, and exploration of his well-preserved body
should help provide answers long sought which include why the mammoth became
extinct at all. Virus and bacteria information as well as pollen or vegetation
samples may be located in the body or the fur which may provide invaluable
information about the prehistoric world.
-
- TO LIVE ONCE MORE
-
- Twenty-thousand year old DNA will prove a stiffer challenge
than that of contemporary sheep or human genetic material, but insiders
feel the risky process has a good chance of suc- cess. The world's best
will be recruited to work with Jarkov's sperm. If successful, an asian
elephant female will be the receptor of the previous, ancient DNA.
-
- Successful cloning could be the result desired by all
of the recovery team, even if this is not the single goal.
-
- Jarkov, whose earlier life ended at the fairly young
age of 47, may help combine the double helix of both ancient life and modern
life to provide researchers with a chance to restore what would otherwise
have been impossible - a living denizen of a long-ago prehistoric world.
-
- No matter what the result of this amazing science coopera-
tion, the boundaries of the possible will have been pushed to the edge
of the envelope once more - and beyond.
-
- _____
-
- The author, Beverly Jaegers, is leader of the U. S. Psi
Squad, and a journalist whose work has been published in magazines and
books since 1968.
-
- Her interest in science is reflected both in the Police-assistance
group she organized, and in the resource work done for scientists in the
fields of archaeology and pre-history.
-
- The Psi Squad's website is www.alltel.net/~computir/uspsisquad/
(computir is the correct spelling - please note) Email is USPsiSquad@aol.com
|
