Woolly Mammoth

Things can get a bit messy when you try to wash a woolly mammoth. Follow this step-by-step guide to successfully clean up your hairy friend. Be forewarned! A mammoth's tummy is terribly tickly. Young readers and parents alike will appreciate this hilarious bath time adventure from Michelle Robinson and Kate Hindley.

Offers information on the discovery of the Jarkov mammoth in the Taymyr Peninsula, including a history of the prehistoric species.

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?

Mammoths roamed Earth for more than two million years. They lived in Europe, Asia, and North America. Then ten thousand years ago, the mammoths vanished. What caused them to die out? Scientists are still trying to find out. In Woolly Mammoths, learn about how mammoths adapted to a changing planet and the possible reasons about how they became extinct.

A family of nine large creatures walks slowly over hard ground. From a distance they look like elephants. But they are very odd. A shaggy coat of long thick hair hangs from their bodies. Seeing an approaching pack of wolves, they quickly form a circle around their young Facing out, they lift their long, twisting tusks. Huddled together, the beasts look like a towering castle surrounded by spikes Woolly mammoths are extinct now---every last one of them is gone. But thousands of years ago they ruled the world. Book jacket.

"Describes the characteristics, food, habitat, behavior, and extinction of woolly mammoths"--

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading It was a frosty, wintry September morning in 2012 when 11-year-old Yevgeny "Zhenya" Salinder donned his warmest quilted jacket, a knitted woolen cap, and matching mittens and headed out the door with his faithful, tail-wagging dogs in tow. Like most mornings, the kid ambled about near the Sopkarga polar weather station, an isolated region in the northern Russian Taymyr Peninsula where he resided, but this particular morning, his pace was slowed by a foul, almost eye-watering stench. Intrigued, Salinder and the dogs sniffed out the source of the strange miasma, and in the process they stumbled upon a defrosted pair of heels from an unknown creature protruding from the cold earth. When young Salinder relayed what he had found to his parents, they alerted the authorities, but initially nobody had the slightest notion how profound the discovery was. The heels, as it turned out, were attached to the carcass of a 16-year-old woolly mammoth that perished some 30,000 years ago, almost completely intact. The mammoth, initially nicknamed "Zhenya" after its discoverer, was said to be the most significant discovery of a mammoth since 1901, and it is the second-best preserved of its kind that has ever been uncovered. Not only was its skeleton in near-pristine condition, it also bore one of its tusks, a mass of skin, fat, meat, an eye, an ear, and many of its organs. It was this stunning find that allowed scientists to confirm the purpose of the "humps" found on the backs of these creatures, which were extra compartments of insulatory fat. By the time Zhenya made the discovery, people had been quite familiar with the extinct giants for many years, and people across the world have seen models and depictions of them to go along with the fossils. Since Georges Cuvier recognized the specimens as an extinct elephant species near the end of the 18th century, various finds of mammoth fossils, particularly in places where they were well preserved in the cold, have made the woolly mammoth perhaps the most popular extinct animal outside of the dinosaurs. Standing around 10 feet tall and weighing several tons, woolly mammoths seem like the stuff of legend, but ancient cave art indicated that unlike dinosaurs, woolly mammoths were contemporaries of early humans, with the last ones going extinct only about 4,000 years ago. All of that explains why people have long been fascinated by woolly mammoths and have even envisioned bringing them back to life via genetics sometime in the future. Woolly Mammoths: The History and Legacy of the Most Famous Extinct Elephant Species looks at the geological origins of the creatures and analyzes the fossil finds.

An exciting and engaging story about life in the Ice Age for Children