Posted on 11/19/2004 7:35:37 PM PST by satchmodog9
TOKYO - World fairs have typically focused on the wonders of the future, highlighting new technologies from glass and steel construction in the 19th century to satellites and computers today. But next year's fair is different.
The Japanese organizers of the 2005 world's fair have shipped a 18,000-year-old frozen woolly mammoth from Siberia to become the centerpiece attraction.
Naoki Suzuki, the Japanese scientist overseeing the Aichi Expo exhibit, said Friday the preserved head, tusks and front leg of the mammoth have arrived in Nagoya near the fair site, about 170 miles west of Tokyo.
My Ex-Girfriend is in Japan ??????????
I'd like to see them find a way to bring one back to life.
That, I would not doubt for one minute.
And then we can have Godzilla versus Mammoth! Cool!
Wouldn't that be awesome? I'm not sure if it's ethical, but damn I'd like to see one walking around.
Experts say the mammoth head, dug up earlier this year, is the most intact specimen of its kind recovered in 200 years. Scientists will conduct tests in a laboratory with a gallery so visitors can watch.
Preliminary tests suggest the bull mammoth lumbered across the prehistoric Siberian plains at more than 9 feet tall, weighing as much as 5 tons, Suzuki said. It was probably between 40 and 45 years old when it died.
His team hopes a battery of planned tests will help unravel the mystery of why mammoths became extinct some 10,000 years ago.
They will use advanced X-rays to peer inside the mammoth's head and generate a 3-D map of its brain; study muscle tissue to determine how mammoths walked; look at rocks and pollen caught in its fur; cut into the tusks to determine what it ate and whether it was ill; and take DNA samples to answer questions about diseases and viruses.
Mammoths first appeared in Africa as long as 4 million years ago, and they roamed the plains of Siberia for nearly 2 million years before suddenly dying off. Scientists remain divided over the cause of the mammoths' extinction, with theories pointing at human hunters, a killer disease or climate change.
For more than two centuries, mammoth remains have been turning up in the Russian tundra above the Arctic Circle. The Expo's mammoth was excavated north of the town of Yakutsk, about 3,100 miles east of Moscow.
Japanese researchers have for years been searching for mammoth remains in Siberia in a separate project aimed at someday making a clone. So far, no DNA samples have been suitable for such an attempt
Sabre-tooth cat vs. Mammoth hopefully. I've always been kind of fascinated by the so-called giant fauna period.
Now HERES something we should Clone!!!
Use an elephant for gestation.
forgot to post the rest of the article because I was thinking of the Mammoth sashimi.
How could tests on one frozen animal hope to deduce that?
Current thinking is they were hunted to death by early man.
Read a great book once on this subject of frozen mammouths:
There have been several almost complete woolly mammoths found in Siberia frozen in the tundra
1. How did a mammoth very large animal) survive in the Arctic?
2. How could a complete mammoth freeze fast enough to be preserved almost whole?
3. Why was their grains and pollens from a much warmer climate in his stomach?
Brrrrrrrrruuuup.
S'cuse me.
Guess I should have left more..like another leg....but
Here tiz!
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
I want to see the things walking around.
A WOOLLY MAMMOTH was unearthed from the Siberian permafrost Oct. 17, 1999 and transported, intact and still frozen to a laboratory for study. Scientists used radar imaging to find the 23,000-year-old creature. then excavated a huge block of dirt to preserve it. REUTERS PHOTO
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