A Russian scientist "is trying to recreate a landscape not seen on Earth for nearly 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age - complete, if possible, with woolly mammoths." It's the Pleistocene Park. New Scientist. See also Pruned.
From article: "Sergey Zimov is no Steven Spielberg, but if this hardy Russian biologist gets his way, he could one day achieve something the film director has only dreamed of. He is trying to recreate a landscape not seen on Earth for nearly 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age - complete, if possible, with woolly mammoths.
The project is called Pleistocene Park, but it's not a tourist attraction. Zimov wants to answer some fundamental questions about the impact early modern humans had on the environment, and in the meantime he might just help to save the planet.
During the Pleistocene epoch, from 1.6 million to 10,000 years ago, great sheets of ice repeatedly advanced and retreated across North America and Eurasia, in places extending as far south as the 40th parallel. That's the same latitude as Denver in Colorado, or Madrid in Spain. The end of the epoch, the period most often associated with the term "ice age", was marked by ecological upheaval, a mass extinction of large mammals and the rise of modern humans.
Some time between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, dozens of species of large animals went extinct throughout northern Eurasia, the Americas, Australia and Madagascar. North America was the most severely hit, with 70 per cent of large mammals disappearing abruptly around 11,000 years ago.
The cause of these extinctions has long been a matter of debate. The prevailing view is that the glacial retreat at the end of the Pleistocene caused drastic shifts in climate and vegetation. What had been cold, arid grassland gave way to warmer and wetter tundra and forest. Large herbivorous mammals couldn't cope with the ecosystem changing under their feet, and died out. And with large herbivores gone, the large carnivores that preyed on them swiftly followed suit, including sabre-toothed tigers and cave lions.
The alternative theory places the blame at the door of Homo sapiens. Proponents of this "blitzkrieg hypothesis" say it is no coincidence that the extinctions followed hot on the heels of human migration into the affected areas. These intelligent newcomers with their stone spear points and coordinated attacks would have decimated the slow-moving herds..."
Later: "If all goes to plan, later this year the park will move into the next phase - stocking the new paddock with the surviving large herbivore species of the mammoth ecosystem, or their closest living analogues. In the first instance that means adding 20 horses and 20 reindeer. Zimov is also working on importing wood bison from Canada, the closest living relatives to the extinct steppe bison. Musk oxen and moose will come next.
As the population density of herbivores increases, the boundary will gradually be extended. If all goes well, the buffer zone will become part of the reserve, and predators such as wolves, bears, lynxes and wolverines - all of which already live in northern Siberia but are vanishingly rare - will be reintroduced. Eventually Pleistocene Park could support a population of Siberian tigers, which are the closest living analogue to the extinct European cave lion, the top predator in the mammoth ecosystem.
And what of mammoths themselves? Russian and Japanese scientists have been attempting to clone these giants using elephant eggs and DNA extracted from mammoth remains found in permafrost. But this remains in the realm of science fiction, says Adrian Lister, an expert on Pleistocene mammals at University College London. "Based on the poor, fragmented preservation of DNA recovered so far, I don't think it will work." Zimov is more hopeful, but realistic about the timescale. "If somebody in the future - in tens of years at best - will be able to recreate mammoth, then Pleistocene Park will be the best place for the animals," he says.
Despite its glacial progress, the project is producing results. Zimov says that the vegetation in the paddock is changing, with mosses in decline and grasses increasing. Zimov is planning to set up test enclosures containing different mixes of animals, plus areas from which all animals are excluded, to see what happens to the vegetation.
The project may even help fight global warming. The soil of the former mammoth steppe holds about 500 gigatonnes of sequestered organic carbon - 2.5 times as much as all the rainforests on Earth. At present this is locked into the permafrost, but as the climate warms it will be converted into CO2 and methane by bacteria..."
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From article: "Sergey Zimov is no Steven Spielberg, but if this hardy Russian biologist gets his way, he could one day achieve something the film director has only dreamed of. He is trying to recreate a landscape not seen on Earth for nearly 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age - complete, if possible, with woolly mammoths.
The project is called Pleistocene Park, but it's not a tourist attraction. Zimov wants to answer some fundamental questions about the impact early modern humans had on the environment, and in the meantime he might just help to save the planet.
During the Pleistocene epoch, from 1.6 million to 10,000 years ago, great sheets of ice repeatedly advanced and retreated across North America and Eurasia, in places extending as far south as the 40th parallel. That's the same latitude as Denver in Colorado, or Madrid in Spain. The end of the epoch, the period most often associated with the term "ice age", was marked by ecological upheaval, a mass extinction of large mammals and the rise of modern humans.
Some time between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, dozens of species of large animals went extinct throughout northern Eurasia, the Americas, Australia and Madagascar. North America was the most severely hit, with 70 per cent of large mammals disappearing abruptly around 11,000 years ago.
The cause of these extinctions has long been a matter of debate. The prevailing view is that the glacial retreat at the end of the Pleistocene caused drastic shifts in climate and vegetation. What had been cold, arid grassland gave way to warmer and wetter tundra and forest. Large herbivorous mammals couldn't cope with the ecosystem changing under their feet, and died out. And with large herbivores gone, the large carnivores that preyed on them swiftly followed suit, including sabre-toothed tigers and cave lions.
The alternative theory places the blame at the door of Homo sapiens. Proponents of this "blitzkrieg hypothesis" say it is no coincidence that the extinctions followed hot on the heels of human migration into the affected areas. These intelligent newcomers with their stone spear points and coordinated attacks would have decimated the slow-moving herds..."
Later: "If all goes to plan, later this year the park will move into the next phase - stocking the new paddock with the surviving large herbivore species of the mammoth ecosystem, or their closest living analogues. In the first instance that means adding 20 horses and 20 reindeer. Zimov is also working on importing wood bison from Canada, the closest living relatives to the extinct steppe bison. Musk oxen and moose will come next.
As the population density of herbivores increases, the boundary will gradually be extended. If all goes well, the buffer zone will become part of the reserve, and predators such as wolves, bears, lynxes and wolverines - all of which already live in northern Siberia but are vanishingly rare - will be reintroduced. Eventually Pleistocene Park could support a population of Siberian tigers, which are the closest living analogue to the extinct European cave lion, the top predator in the mammoth ecosystem.
And what of mammoths themselves? Russian and Japanese scientists have been attempting to clone these giants using elephant eggs and DNA extracted from mammoth remains found in permafrost. But this remains in the realm of science fiction, says Adrian Lister, an expert on Pleistocene mammals at University College London. "Based on the poor, fragmented preservation of DNA recovered so far, I don't think it will work." Zimov is more hopeful, but realistic about the timescale. "If somebody in the future - in tens of years at best - will be able to recreate mammoth, then Pleistocene Park will be the best place for the animals," he says.
Despite its glacial progress, the project is producing results. Zimov says that the vegetation in the paddock is changing, with mosses in decline and grasses increasing. Zimov is planning to set up test enclosures containing different mixes of animals, plus areas from which all animals are excluded, to see what happens to the vegetation.
The project may even help fight global warming. The soil of the former mammoth steppe holds about 500 gigatonnes of sequestered organic carbon - 2.5 times as much as all the rainforests on Earth. At present this is locked into the permafrost, but as the climate warms it will be converted into CO2 and methane by bacteria..."
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