Download or read book How to Clone a Mammoth written by Beth Shapiro and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider's view on bringing extinct species back to life Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? In How to Clone a Mammoth, Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist and pioneer in ancient DNA research, addresses this intriguing question by walking readers through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction. From deciding which species should be restored to anticipating how revived populations might be overseen in the wild, Shapiro vividly explores the extraordinary cutting-edge science that is being used to resurrect the past. Considering de-extinction's practical benefits and ethical challenges, Shapiro argues that the overarching goal should be the revitalization and stabilization of contemporary ecosystems. Looking at the very real and compelling science behind an idea once seen as science fiction, How to Clone a Mammoth demonstrates how de-extinction will redefine conservation's future.
Download or read book Mammoths written by Adrian Lister and published by Chartwell Books. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling visual record of one of Earth's most extraordinary species, this updated and revised edition of Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age integrates exciting new research to piece together the story of mammoths, mastodons, and their relatives, icons of the Ice Age. Incorporating recent genetic work, new fossil finds, new extinction theories, and more, Mammoths is a captivating exploration of how these mighty creatures evolved, lived, and mysteriously disappeared. The book features a wealth of color illustrations that depict mammoths in their dramatic Ice Age habitats, scores of photographs of mammoth remains, and images of the art of prehistoric people who saw these animals in the flesh. Have you ever wondered what a Mammoth would look like in real life? Find out what a Mammoth would look like today and so much more in Mammoths. Full of intriguing facts, boxed features, and clear graphics, Mammoths examines the findings, including intact frozen carcasses from Siberia and fossilized remains from South Dakota, California, England, France, and elsewhere that have provided clues to the mammoths' geographic range, body structure, way of life, and interactions with early humans. It is an enthralling story of paleontological, archaeological, and geological exploration and of the fascinating investigations of biologists, anthropologists, and art historians worldwide.
Download or read book Discovering the Mammoth written by John J McKay and published by Pegasus Books. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating saga of solving the mystery of this ancient animal who once roamed the north country—and has captivated our collective imagination ever since. Long after the last mammoth died and was no longer part of our diet, this awe inspiring creature still played a role in human life. Cultures around the world interpreted the remains of mammoths through their own world view and mythology. When the ancient Greeks saw deposits of giant fossils, they knew they had discovered where the gods had vanquished the titans. When the Chinese discovered buried ivory, they knew they had found dragons’ teeth. But as the Age of Reason dawned, monsters and giants gave way to the scientific method. Yet the mystery of these mighty bones remained. How did Enlightenment thinkers overcame centuries of myth and misunderstanding to reconstruct an unknown animal? The journey to unravel that puzzle begins in the 1690s with the arrival of new type of ivory from Russia. It ends during the Napoleonic Wars with the first recovery of a frozen mammoth. The path to figuring out the mammoth was traveled by a colorful cast of characters, including Peter the Great, Ben Franklin, the inventor of hot chocolate, even one pirate, and it culminates with the creation of the science of paleontology.
Download or read book From Kostenki to Clovis written by Olga Soffer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the American Side I went to the USSR for the first time in 1982 to attend the 11th meeting of the International Union for Quaternary research (INQUA) held at the Moscow State University. At that time relations between our two countries were anything but congenial and many restrictions were placed on our viewing the archaeological and paleontological collections and labora tory facilities. This was not the ideal climate for the free exchange of ideas needed for meaningful research. However, it was obvious to us that the strained relations did not extend to scientific discussions between scholars. We left that meeting well aware that if the problems of prehistoric Old World-New World relationships were to be resolved, it would eventually require cooperative research efforts within the world community of archaeologists. At that time, the pre-Clovis problem in New World archaeology was foremost in the minds of many North American researchers: tool technology and assemblages were being studied as a possible means of establishing cultural relationships across the Bering Strait, Clovis sites and mammoth kills were being looked at with new ideas for interpretation, and New World researchers realized that to resolve these questions they had to become familiar with the archaeological record of northeast Asia. A chance meeting of the writer with Olga Soffer in 1983 led to serious discussions of the sites on the Russian or East European Plain.
Download or read book Barger Gulch written by Todd A. Surovell and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of the last Ice Age in a valley bottom in the Rocky Mountains, a group of bison hunters overwintered. Through the analysis of more than 75,000 pieces of chipped stone, archaeologist Todd A. Surovell is able to provide one of the most detailed looks yet at the lifeways of hunter-gatherers from 12,800 years ago. The best archaeological sites are those that present problems and inspire research, writes Surovell. From the start, the Folsom site called Barger Gulch Locality B was one of those sites; it was a problem-rich environment. Many Folsom sites are sparse scatters of stone and bone, a reflection of a mobile lifestyle that leaves little archaeological materials. The people at Barger Gulch left behind tens of thousands of pieces of chipped stone; they appeared to have spent quite a bit of time there in comparison to other places they inhabited. Summarizing findings from nine seasons of excavations, Surovell explains that the site represents a congregation of mobile hunter-gatherers who spent winter along Barger Gulch, a tributary of the Colorado River. Surovell uses spatial patterns in chipped stone to infer the locations of hearths and house features. He examines the organization of household interiors and discusses differential use of interior and exterior spaces. Data allow inference about the people who lived at the site, including aspects of the identity of flintknappers and household versus group mobility. The site shows evidence of a Paleoindian camp circle, child flintknapping, household production of weaponry, and the fission/fusion dynamics of group composition that is typical of nomadic peoples. Barger Gulch provides key findings on Paleoindian technological variation and spatial and social organization.
Download or read book Twilight of the Mammoths written by Paul S. Martin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-05-08 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Paul S. Martin's innovative ideas on late quaternary extinctions and wildlife restoration have fueled one of science's most stimulating recent debates. He expounds them vividly here, and defends them eloquently. A must-read."—David Rains Wallace, author of Beasts of Eden "This is a marvelous read, by a giant in American prehistory, about one of the greatest mysteries in the earth sciences."—Tim Flannery, author of The Eternal Frontier "Whether or not you agree with Paul Martin, he has shaped how we think about our Pleistocene ancestors and their role in transforming this planet."—Ross D. E. MacPhee, Curator of Mammalogy, American Museum of Natural History
Download or read book Hunters of the Recent Past written by Leslie B. Davis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of a series of more than 20 volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986, which brought together archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, academics from contingent disciplines, and non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. This book considers prehistoric and more recent manifestations of human hunting behaviour, with a general emphasis on communal hunting. It demonstrates that the combination of archaeological, ethnographic and ethnohistorical approaches provides a researched basis for consideration of the topic on worldwide, regional, and local scales. It includes theoretical and methodological issues, within a context of enquiry, original data presentation, and discussion. It is of interest to archaeologists, anthropologists and ethnohistorians.
Download or read book Human Colonization of the Arctic The Interaction Between Early Migration and the Paleoenvironment written by V.M. Kotlyakov and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human Colonization of the Arctic: The Interaction Between Early Migration and the Paleoenvironment explores the relationship between humans and the environment during this early time of colonization, utilizing analytical methods from both the social and natural sciences to develop a unique, interdisciplinary approach that gives the reader a much broader understanding of the interrelationship between humanity and the environment. As colonization of the polar region was intermittent and irregular, based on how early humans interacted with the land, this book provides a glance into how humans developed new ways to make the region more habitable. The book applies not only to the physical continents, but also the arctic waters. This is how humans succeeded in crossing the Bering Strait and water area between Canadian Arctic Islands. About 4500 years ago , humans reached the northern extremity of Greenland and were able to live through the months of polar nights by both adapting to, and making, changes in their environment. - Written by pioneering experts who understand the relationship between humans and the environment in the arctic - Addresses why the patterns of colonization were so irregular - Includes coverage of the earliest examples of humans, developing an understanding of ecosystem services for economic development in extreme climates - Covers both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
Download or read book Neanderthal Man written by Svante Pbo and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An influential geneticist traces his investigation into the genes of humanity's closest evolutionary relatives, explaining what his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome has revealed about their extinction and the origins of modern humans.
Download or read book Time Process and Structured Transformation in Archaeology written by James McGlade and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-16 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a discipline which essentially studies how modern man came to be, it is remarkable that there are hardly any conceptual tools to describe change. This is due to the history of the western intellectual and scientific tradition, which for a long time favoured mechanics over dynamics, and the study of stability over that of change. Change was primarily deemed due to external events (in archaeology mainly climatic or 'environmental'). Revolutionary innovations in the natural and life sciences, often (erroneously) referred to as 'chaos theory', suggest that there are ways to overcome this problem. A wide range of processes can be described in terms of dynamic systems, and modern computing methods enable us to investigate many of their properties. This volume presents a cogent argument for the use of such approaches, and a discussion of a number of its aspects by a range of scientists from the humanities, social and natural sciences, and archaeology.
Download or read book Mammoth written by Chris Flynn and published by Univ. of Queensland Press. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original, unforgettable and thought-provoking new novel by award-winning author Chris Flynn that will change how readers understand the world. Narrated by a 13,000-year-old extinct mammoth, this is the (mostly) true story of how a collection of prehistoric creatures came to be on sale at a natural history auction in New York in 2007. By tracing how and when these fossils were unearthed, Mammoth leads us on a funny and fascinating journey from the Pleistocene epoch to nineteenth-century America and beyond, revealing how ideas about science and religion have shaped our world. With our planet on the brink of calamitous climate change, Mammoth scrutinises humanity's role in the destruction of the natural world while also offering a message of hope.
Download or read book The Ancestress Hypothesis written by Kathryn Coe and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our society it has long been believed that art serves very little social purpose. Evolutionary anthropologists, however, are examining a potential role for art in human evolution. Kathryn Coe looks to the visual arts of traditional societies for clues. Because they are passed down from previous generations, traditional art forms such as body decoration, funeral ornaments, and ancestral paintings offer ways to promote social relationships among kin and codescendants of a common ancestor. Mothers used art forms to anchor themselves and their kin to the father and his kin, and to promote the survival and reproductive success of kin and descendants. Individuals who abided by this strategy, accompanied by its strict codes of cooperation, left more distant descendants than did individuals who did not. Over time, given this reproductive success, large numbers of individuals would be identified as codescendants of a common ancestor and would cooperate as if they were close kin. These cooperative codescendants were more likely to survive and leave descendants. With each new generation these clans propagated not only their genes but also their behavioral strategy, the replication or presence of "art." The book concludes by examining the changing characteristics of visual art -- including a higher value on creativity, competition, and cost -- when traditional constraints on social behavior disappear. Book jacket.
Download or read book Past and Future Rapid Environmental Changes written by Brian Huntley and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numerous experts including ecologists, geneticists, paleontologists and climatologists, investigate the response of terrestrial organisms to changes in their environment. The volume comprises an introductory and a final chapter by the editors as well as another 35 contributions. These are divided into six sections: 1. past environmental changes - the late-Quaternary; 2. spatial responses to past changes; 3. mechanisms enabling spatial responses; 4. evolutionary responses to past changes; 5. mechanisms enabling evolutionary responses; 6. predicted future environmental changes and simulated responses. The overwhelming and unanimous conclusion of all contributors is that forecasted global environmental changes pose a severe threat to the integrity of ecosystems worldwide and to the survival of at least some species.
Download or read book The Invisible Sex written by J. M. Adovasio and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. Recent archaeological research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer, two of the world's leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving, present an exciting new look at prehistory. With science writer Jake Page, they argue that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting. Even more important, women played a central role in the development of language and social life—in short, in our becoming human. In this eye-opening book, a new story about women in prehistory emerges with provocative implications for our assumptions about gender today.
Download or read book Ancient Warfare written by John Carman and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2009-11-16 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious and innovative book sets out to establish a new understanding of human aggression and conflict in the distant past. Examining the evidence of warfare in prehistoric times and in the early historical period, John Carman and Anthony Harding throw fresh light on the motives and methods of the combatants. This study marks a significant new step in this fascinating and neglected subject, and sets the agenda for many years to come. By integrating archaeological and documentary research, the contributors seek to explain why some sides gained and others lost in battle and examine the impact of warfare on the social and political developments of early chiefdoms and states. Their conclusions suggest a new interpretation of the evolution of warfare from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, through the military practice of the Ancient Greeks and the Romans, to the conflicts of the Anglo-Saxons and of medieval Europe.
Download or read book Woolly written by Ben Mezrich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and The 37th Parallel tells the fascinating Jurassic Park-like story of the genetic restoration of an extinct species—the woolly mammoth. “Paced like a thriller…Woolly reanimates history and breathes new life into the narrative of nature” (NPR). With his “unparalleled” (Booklist, starred review) writing, Ben Mezrich takes us on an exhilarating and true adventure story from the icy terrain of Siberia to the cutting-edge genetic labs of Harvard University. A group of scientists work to make fantasy reality by splicing DNA from frozen woolly mammoth into the DNA of a modern elephant. Will they be able to turn the hybrid cells into a functional embryo and potentially bring the extinct creatures to our modern world? Along with this team of brilliant scientists, a millionaire plans to build the world’s first Pleistocene Park and populate a huge tract of the Siberian tundra with ancient herbivores as a hedge against an environmental ticking time bomb that is hidden deep within the permafrost. More than a story of genetics, this is a thriller illuminating the real-life race against global warming, of the incredible power of modern technology, of the brave fossil hunters who battle polar bears and extreme weather conditions, and the ethical quandary of cloning extinct animals. This “rollercoaster quest for the past and future” (Christian Science Monitor) asks us if we can right the wrongs of our ancestors who hunted the woolly mammoth to extinction and at what cost?
Download or read book Out of Eden The Peopling of the World written by Stephen Oppenheimer and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a brilliant synthesis of genetic, archaeological, linguistic and climatic data, Oppenheimer challenges current thinking with his claim that there was only one successful migration out of Africa. In 1988 Newsweek headlined the startling discovery that everyone alive on the earth today can trace their maternal DNA back to one woman who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago. It was thought that modern humans populated the world through a series of migratory waves from their African homeland. Now an even more radical view has emerged, that the members of just one group are the ancestors of all non-Africans now alive, and that this group crossed the mouth of the Red Sea a mere 85,000 years ago. It means that not only is every person on the planet descended from one African 'Eve' but every non-African is related to a more recent Eve, from that original migratory group. This is a revolutionary new theory about our origins that is both scholarly and entertaining, a remarkable account of the kinship of all humans. Further details of the findings in this book are presented at www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/
