Re: Quaternary Park?

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

At 11:57 PM 7/8/98 -0700, Jaime wrote:
>Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
>
><There's one point I haven't seen brought up yet in this debate -- How
>can an animal like the mammoth, that evolved to live in an ice age
>climate, be expected to survive in a modern climate?>
>
>  The mammoth evolved in a drier, arid climate like central Africa,
>then migrated north, east, and west. Only the species *M. imperator*
>(I believe) managed to don the wooly coat, while the others may have
>been as bare as Indian elephants.

I don't know of any evidence that _M. imperator_ was particularly woolly.
THE woolly mammoth is _M. primigenius_: to my knowledge, it is the only
species known from frozen material.  Hence, this northern latitude species
would be the one to be reconstructed from the frozen sperm.

>From my interpretation of the original posting, the team involved is not
trying to reestablish a viable population for introduction into the wild,
but was instead simply trying to establish if it were possible to revive an
extinct species.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:th81@umail.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661