Briefly Noted

Mammoths: Ice-Age Giants

Larry D. Agenbroad and Lisa Nelson (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 2002) 120 pp., $7.95

Mammoths reigned as giants on the earth for more than 3 million years, providing Paleolithic humans with meat, warmth (marrow- and fat-laden mammoth bones burned relatively well), artistic inspiration (exquisite cave paintings and carvings of woolly mammoths have been uncovered in France and Spain) and construction materials (the remains of 15,000-year-old huts built of 300-pound mammoth skulls, shoulder blades, pelvic bones and vertebrae have been excavated in the Ukraine). Teen readers will be especially intrigued by the authors’ discussion about why the mammoths became extinct around 10,000 years ago, and whether or not brand-new mammoths can (or should) be cloned by recovering DNA from a frozen specimen recently found in Jarkov, Siberia.

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