Raising the Mammoth Page #4

the hunter of that period.

The St. Petersburg Museum houses

some of the world's most impressive

woolly mammoth remains.

With no natural predators

other than man

they thrived across the

northern hemisphere

for more than a hundred

thousand years.

Why the mammoth died out

while elephants survived

is a perplexing mystery.

After years on their trail

Professor Vereschagin has drawn

his own conclusions

about the mammoth's demise.

I support the climatic theory.

At the end of the Ice Age

there were major successive

climatic shifts

periods of cold followed by warming.

And that played a fatal role

in the disappearance of the mammoth.

The situation, of course

was worsened by the impact

of human hunters.

As their numbers dwindled

the extinction was further hastened

by the influence of the animal's psyche.

I even think they were depressed.

Many died off in great numbers

during their migration,

most of them by drowning.

During the Ice Age,

sea levels dropped and the tips

of Siberia

and Alaska were linked

by a land bridge.

Mammoths made their way

to North America across

what's now the Bering Strait.

As soon as they reached

the new continent

the Columbians migrated south

some as far as Florida and Mexico.

In these less extreme climates

they became the largest mammoths

that ever lived.

The most complete record of

their history lies

at the bottom of a sinkhole in

Hot Springs, South Dakota.

A geologist tapped for the next

Siberian expedition

Larry Agenbroad oversees this

excavation in progress

and speculates why most of his

finds are male.

A mammoth society was much like

an elephant society.

The males, when they become

mature sexually

they are expelled from the

family unit

and they don't have much luck

in the dating game

until they're about 35 years of age.

So there's roughly 22 to 25 years

of hormone flow

and nothing to do with it

and no guidance.

And they get into really dumb

situations

a little bit like our own species.

Imagine yourself as a young

male mammoth

oh, maybe uh, 16 to 18 years old.

And it's just snowed

and you've got a choice.

You can take your tusks and sweep off

the snow for last year's dead grass

or, if you look down in this sinkhole

with a thermal pond

you're gonna have green vegetation

all around the edge of this pond.

I don't think it takes too much of

a stretch of imagination

to realize they're gonna go

for the greens.

If they did, this was a one-way trip.

They either starved to death after

eating everything

around the pond's edge

or they swam till they were

exhausted and drowned.

The most physically imposing

mammoths

the Columbians stood twice

the height of a man

and were double the weight

of an elephant.

Unlike its woolly cousin,

the Columbian roamed exclusively

through North America

and met our early ancestors.

Basically, once they're grown

once they're mature,

there are no enemies for mammoths

except humans.

As young, they're subject to big

predators, big carnivores.

The big cats, the big bears,

would have been the only natural

enemies they had.

Proof of early man's encounters

with the mammoth

is evident in the art of cave

dwellers across Europe

and North America.

To build their huts and feed

their kin

men killed mammoths in vast numbers.

The mammoth shared the food-rich

grasslands

with animals that survived

the Ice Age - musk oxen,

reindeer, horses and bison.

How could he vanish amidst

such abundance?

Some say it was man who did

the mammoth in.

Others say he perished from disease

climate-related food shortages

or natural catastrophe.

With so few footsteps to follow

we may never have the answer.

Searching for clues to the mammoth's

past is what drives Dick Mol

a key science advisor for the next

Jarkov mammoth team.

The North Sea is rich in

Ice Age fossils

including the woolly mammoth

and its ancestors,

and Dick has been studying them here

for some 32 years.

During a period of the Ice Age

water levels dropped

and stretches of what's now

the North Sea

were grassy meadowlands called

steppes

full of grazing animals that lived

died and fossilized here.

12,222 years ago, temperatures rose

melting the polar ice sheets and

inundating low-lying areas.

Mammoth country was shrinking.

Trawling the ocean floor

for flatfish

fishermen can net hundreds of fossils

every time they go out.

They're a good source of research

subjects for Dick Mol.

Oh wow, this is heavy.

It's broken

but still a nice specimen.

This part was hidden in the skull

and it's well

probably 62 to 72 centimeters is

missing from this tusk

but it's a nice specimen.

It looks to me it's the right tusk.

The fossils in Siberia should be

even more spectacular.

Summer arrives in Khatanga with

little fanfare.

With its shroud of snow cast aside

for a few brief weeks,

the city feels pale and gray

but for a few splashes of color.

Though the Siberian weather is brisk

the ground has thawed

allowing everyone a little

more mobility.

Traditionally, this is the season

when scientists come to

look for fossils

and mammoth carcasses in the tundra.

For Bernard and a few members of his

mammoth team

this will be a fact-finding mission

and an opportunity to check out

new leads.

Thousands of lakes dot the Taimyr

Peninsula

a garden of Eden for the woolly

mammoth back in the late Pleistocene

when the grasslands were lush

and diverse.

At the request of an important

passenger

this will be the first stop.

A guiding force in Bernard's search

is Russia's preeminent authority

on mammoths

Professor Nikolai Vereschagin.

Since the 1822's,

only 12 mammoth carcasses have ever

been found in Siberia

and Vereschagin recovered two

in one year.

Most of the discoveries to date were

initially made by hunters

fishermen or gold prospectors who

moved around the tundra.

The lure of the Taimyr to six-ton

grazers is still evident today

according to Vereschagin.

It's the grass.

Its main feature is its solid root

structure.

It's an extraordinarily hearty plant

that thrives in moist conditions.

It was the basis of the

mammoth's diet.

This grass "volunteered" here.

As the level of water in the

lake dropped

the grass took over and invaded

the areas

where the water had retreated.

Where could the mammoths come to find

large enough pastures to graze in?

These lakebeds provided plenty of

food to satisfy them.

The grasslands still feed thousands

of grazers each season

and no one knows the most bountiful

spots better than the Dolgan.

This is also the time of year

when the nomads find mammoth remains

melted out of the tundra

tusks and bones and sometimes flesh.

Now they're showing Bernard other

sites with artifacts.

To share this knowledge with

a foreigner

is unusual for the Dolgans.

But his work on the Jarkov mammoth

has forged a bond of trust.

Buried at a site close by are tusks

that belong to one of the men.

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