(sorry about the pun, BUT) Is this cool or what?
Call of the wild: the mammoth and woolly rhino, whose roaming was depicted by prehistoric man, may make a comeback
Scientist finds prehistoric 'zoo' in Siberian ice
Nicholas Hellen
SCIENTISTS have located a frozen "zoo" of prehistoric creatures under the Siberian permafrost which they intend to retrieve for a cloning experiment.
Members of an expedition which last autumn airlifted a mammoth from its icy tomb now claim to have evidence of an extraordinary menagerie of extinct creatures.
Bernard Buigues, the French leader of the expedition, said he knew of another 18 locations which would yield the animals' bodies in a well-preserved state.
He is to begin the search for woolly rhino, steppe lions, giant deer, foxes and hardy breeds of horses from 20,000BC within the next month. He will cover an area extending 300 miles to the northwest and northeast of the Siberian town of Khatanga, 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
"Evidence from bones and tusks collected by nomads has alerted us to the location of the sites," said Buigues. He has travelled extensively in the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia in the past 10 years, and believes he may also have found signs of human settlement from 2,000BC on the shores of Lake Taymyr.
Competition among rival teams of scientists has prompted veiled accusations of underhand tactics. There are suggestions that one group offered the nomads of the region villas on the C“te D'Azur in exchange for successful leads.
Associates of Buigues, whose film of the recovery of the first mammoth will be shown on the Discovery Channel on March 12, say his tactics for winning their co-operation are simple. "He carries a Polaroid camera everywhere to remind them who he is. Almost two-thirds of the 8,000 nomads in the region now have a picture of him together with them."
The prospect of discovering more animal remains in the ice has revived hopes of finding cells in sufficiently good condition to re-create some of the animal life of the Pleistocene era.
Larry Agenbroad, professor of geology at North Arizona University and one of the principal scientific advisers to the expedition, believes it may be possible in the long term to introduce the animals to North America.
Agenbroad, who has spent 30 years working with mammoth remains, said: "There is no significant difference between restoring prehistoric animals and restoring modern creatures such as grizzly bear and bison. Contrary to received opinion, hunting, not just climatic change, also played a part in the demise of the mammoth."
Rival Japanese researchers also have ambitions to emulate Jurassic Park with a sanctuary for the offspring of frozen mammoths and other extinct creatures.
Professor Akira Iritani, of Kinki University, hopes to find a suitable habitat for mammoths in a 100 sq mile wildlife reserve in the Russian republic of Yakutia, known as Pleistocene Park. It is currently home to Yakutian horses and Canadian bison.
This weekend Iritani said he believed mammoths would lumber across Siberia again within the next 20 years.
"We went to the park and looked at it by helicopter. It is fine in the summer, but we will have to provide some shelter for the mammoth in winter. We could easily get our hands on ancient horses and the ancestor of the Siberian tiger," he said.
He envisages releasing up to 40 mammoths in the park, and hopes to revive the species by cross-breeding with female elephants. He believes each generation will approach more closely the genetic inheritance of its forefathers as the females are impregnated with more DNA from the male mammoth.
The first step begins next month when a team of 25 scientists starts to thaw out the mammoth hacked out of the ground by Buigues.(cont)
sunday-times.co.uk
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