Just saw on the news that scientists in Siberia have discovered a 10,000 to 15,000 year old frozen mammoth with muscle tissue and liquid blood. Pretty amazing I reckon.

oooooh clone it, clone it, clone it!

<creationist>
See! Proof that the Earth isn’t “millions of years old” like those so-called scientists say..
</creationist>

How is that proof?

Oh sorry silly me I forgot – they are creationists they dont need proof, they just create some whacky story and believe it . . .

err most young earth creationists say the earth is only 6000 years old so this doesn’t help… 🙂

Scary stuff. Can you imagine if they suceed. A Mammoth being around 15k years later than it should be. What then, stick it in a Zoo and charge 100 quid a ticket. Thinking of Jeff Goldblum’s character’s speech from Jurassic park.

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Gee, the lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here, uh… staggers me.

Donald Gennaro: Well thank you, Dr. Malcolm, but I think things are a little bit different then you and I had feared…

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, I know. They’re a lot worse.

Donald Gennaro: Now, wait a second now, we haven’t even seen the park…

John Hammond: No, no, Donald, Donald, Donald… let him talk. There’s no reason… I want to hear every viewpoint, I really do.

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Don’t you see the danger, John, inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun.

Donald Gennaro: It’s hardly appropriate to start hurling generalizations…

Dr. Ian Malcolm: If I may… Um, I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here, it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now

[bangs on the table]

Dr. Ian Malcolm: you’re selling it, you wanna sell it. Well…

John Hammond: I don’t think you’re giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody’s ever done before…

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

John Hammond: Condors. Condors are on the verge of extinction…

Dr. Ian Malcolm: [shaking his head] No…

John Hammond: If I was to create a flock of condors on this island, you wouldn’t have anything to say.

Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, hold on. This isn’t some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction.

yeah, but it’s a mammoth! and they were hunted to extinction weren’t they? not naturally deselected. I guess it depends on the definition of ‘natural’.

“Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction”

So what?

Are we, the human race, not a force of nature?

Bring ’em back I say…. imagening the size of the steaks !!

Edit after Brakes post … lol … this time there’s an endless supply … Hooray

What are the cycling applications? Lovely warm mammothwool socks?

err most young earth creationists say the earth is only 6000 years old so this doesn’t help…

You might think that, but you’d be surprised how their minds work..

http://creation.com/mammoth-riddle-of-the-ice-age

The word “how” is redundant in that sentence.

Oh, that article is brilliant.

“How did Noah get elephants onto the ark?” – “oh, that’s easy, he took small ones!”

everyone knows Creationists are nutters, so I am not sure why you hope to prove by increasing the hit rate on that loonies site.

You also have to bear in mind that you don’t have to be religious be to be a loony, plenty of scientists are barking to.

I think current thinking is that Mammoths did die out from climate change related habitat change. We don’t know what they actually ate, do we?

yeah, but it’s a mammoth! and they were hunted to extinction weren’t they? not naturally deselected. I guess it depends on the definition of ‘natural’.

No. Climate change did them in. There were nowhere near enough humans around to be able to hunt the large mammals to extinction, baring in mind they only had rocks and stone-tipped spears. The native Americans never hunted the Bison to any extent that even touched the numbers available, it took Caucasian invaders with rifles and huge amounts of ammunition to slaughter hundreds of thousands of animals.

No. Climate change did them in. There were nowhere near enough humans around to be able to hunt the large mammals to extinction, baring in mind they only had rocks and stone-tipped spears. The native Americans never hunted the Bison to any extent that even touched the numbers available, it took Caucasian invaders with rifles and huge amounts of ammunition to slaughter hundreds of thousands of animals.

You do realise that certain Native American tribes drove whole herds of bison off cliffs, don’t you? No weapons needed.

Didn’t seem to affect their numbers adversely though did it?

I am sure it did affect their numbers. Maybe not to extinction, but the Native Americans were not the eco saints they are often portrayed as being: They often hunted way beyond their actual needs.

I think it is fair to say they pushed the sustainability of the bison to the limit.

the Native Americans were not the eco saints they are often portrayed as being

No I know. The extinction of loads of North American fauna mysteriously co-incides with the arrival of Homo Sapiens, and some native tribes get rather offended when this gets pointed out.

I think it is fair to say they pushed the sustainability of the bison to the limit.

Absolute and utter garbage.

During the 19th century, settlers killed some 50 million bison for food, sport, and to deprive Native Americans of their most important natural asset. The once enormous herds were reduced to only a few hundred animals http://animals.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/mammals/american-bison/

Climate change did them in.

I’m afraid the Creationuts beg to differ – from the linked page:

“Note: after this article was written, Mike Oard proposed that the mammoths were killed and buried by gigantic dust storms, because the yedomas and muck are loess, or wind-blown silt.” 😆

no don’t clone them. that would be stupid and selfish. where the blinking flip are you going to put a woolly mammoth. there is not any space. we need to be reducing numbers, period, not adding old extinct species back in. blimey we humans are so daft

Tesco meat aisle.

Plenty of space for new species in the gaps where all the ones we’ve extinctified use to be.

dinner anyone?

Absolute and utter garbage.

During the 19th century, settlers killed some 50 million bison for food, sport, and to deprive Native Americans of their most important natural asset. The once enormous herds were reduced to only a few hundred animals http://animals.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/mammals/american-bison/

Thank you for flying off the handle without understanding my point: I didn’t say the settlers weren’t responsible for the near extinction of the bison, I said the Native Americans were pushing hunting the bison right to the limit of sustainability, after which their numbers would have started to seriously decline. As it was, their numbers were kept in check.

To say that the Native Americans had no influence on the numbers of the bison is simply untrue.

no don’t clone them. that would be stupid and selfish. where the blinking flip are you going to put a woolly mammoth. there is not any space. we need to be reducing numbers, period, not adding old extinct species back in. blimey we humans are so daft

Reducing numbers of what, exactly? You can’t seriously mean animals? It is the number of us humans that needs reducing, not animals.

Reducing numbers of what, exactly? You can’t seriously mean animals? It is the number of us humans that needs reducing, not animals.

Reducing numbers in general really, just feeling of late it is rarther busy around here.

Yes humans for the most part, but without some seriously selective thinning of our own species then the rest of our prey are never going to come out well. Seems as a whole that we have let the power go to our heads and our hurry to force evolutions hand forwards can’t end well.

I certainly agree we shouldn’t bring back extinct species. Maybe if they are recently extinct i.e. the same ecosystem they left still exists and it was our fault for rendering them extinct, then OK, but the Mammoth, and other such species? No.

It opens up a whole avenue of genetic engineering, isn’t the obvious end point to clone a human? Neanderthal man perhaps.

To say that the Native Americans had no influence on the numbers of the bison is simply untrue.

The native American influence on Bison numbers was so small, it was almost negligible.

The only reason they were wiped out was to starve the native Americans off their land by settlers, hunters were paid to kill bison; and they killed them in such huge numbers they left the meat to rot on the prairies and they couldn’t collect it, even if they wanted to, and only collected the hides for the bounties.

The herd size dropped from and estimated size of 30,000,000 to ~ 1500 bison in under a decade.

I think it is fair to say they pushed the sustainability of the bison to the limit.

…..

I said the Native Americans were pushing hunting the bison right to the limit of sustainability, after which their numbers would have started to seriously decline. As it was, their numbers were kept in check.

What only leaving 30 million was the cusp of sustainability then?

To say that the Native Americans had no influence on the numbers of the bison is simply untrue.

Of course it is they killed them for food etc but to claim they were under threat of extinction or the cusp of sustainability by them when they numbered 30 million is ludicrous and just not true.

you really have to love STW, the op makes a comment on the reported finding of a mammoth and we end up in a numbers argument over bison in north america! I’m waiting to see some graphs before I decide which is right.

I tried really hard to find a graph containing an image of a settler surrounded by bison carcasses. But I failed 😥

Of course it is they killed them for food etc but to claim they were under threat of extinction or the cusp of sustainability by them when they numbered 30 million is ludicrous and just not true.

I did not say they hunted them to near extinction, and you are misunderstanding the meaning of “to the limit of sustainability”: Sustainability is when you reach a balance where the numbers roughly stay the same, or maybe even increase in a controlled manner.

The Native Americans were hunting the bison so much that they were on this limit – maybe deliberately. If their numbers grew any more and they needed to kill more and more bison, then they may have pushed over that limit and the bison numbers would have started to fall. Unfortunately, the settlers intervened and made a thoroughly efficient job of wiping out the bison.

no don’t clone them. that would be stupid and selfish. where the blinking flip are you going to put a woolly mammoth. there is not any space. we need to be reducing numbers, period, not adding old extinct species back in. blimey we humans are so daft

Reducing numbers in general really, just feeling of late it is rarther busy around here.

Have you been out of town recently. Or left the country and travelled anywhere.

There is space, literally, everywhere.

Loads of it, you can barely move for open space.

Shh, don’t tell anyone, otherwise they’ll come out of the cities and get in the way. Then the mamouth a will have to live in soho, and that’ll be too confusing .

Given that it was one version of GCSE Geography today with a specific question on the US prairies, the line taught these days is that the Native Indians may have been responsible for clearing forests to make land available for the bison to graze. So for geographers the question is were the prairies the result of natural patterns (the usual story) or were they the result of the man made forest fires as the NIs made room for bison to hunt? As for the bison numbers, the text book line is that it was the arrival of the European settlers which took numbers down from several million to 50! So perhaps they both had a negative impact on the environment? Not that this has anything to do with mammoths, but the coincidence with today’s exam was to close to pass unnoticed!

What did the elephant say to the girrafe?
Bloody mammoths coming over here.. Taking all our jobs… Not worked in bloody thousands of years…