How to Deep-Freeze a Mammoth

by Björn Kurtén

Book Overview

How does bison meat taste after being frozen for 30,000 years? Were Ice Age cave painters trying to create "art" or just record history? How did ancient oil spills occur, before there were oil companies to create them? Those are just some of the questions renowned paleontologist Bjorn Kurten answers in this collection of lighthearted essays on fossils, ancient life, and related topics. Written for the general reader, these lively pieces range from...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231059787
• ISBN13: 9780231059787
• Release Date: April 1986
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 121 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great collection of popular science essays

_How To Deep-Freeze a Mammoth_ by Bjorn Kurten is a collection of fourteen essays of about four to ten pages each. Most of the essays in the book were originally published in a Swedish version, which were then translated by Erik H. Friis, and then rewritten, updated, and expanded for this book by the author (the Swedish version is copyright 1981, while this work is copyright 1986). A number of black and white drawings by Hubert Pepper accompany the book. The book is 117 pages long and was a quick read; I read it in a day. A rather enjoyable, for the most part easy to read book, the first four essays dealt with the author's opinions about the world of science as a whole, contrasting it with the world of pseudoscience. Along the way Kurten attacked some of the more egregious examples of pseudoscience, such as several Nazi "scientists", the Soviet "geneticist" Trofim Lysenko, Creationism (which he dealt with only very briefly), and the Swedish writer Ivan Troeng, who wrote a book claiming that the moon originated in the Pacific Ocean 11,800 years ago as a result of collision between the Earth and a smaller celestial body. Kurten disliked the fact that pseudoscientists point to individuals who truly revolutionized their fields, like Darwin, Mendel, and Galileo, and when the pseudoscientists offer their revolutionary ideas and are rejected by mainstream science, claim that they are being persecuted just as these individuals were (Kurten asserted that simply so much more is known that a true and utter revolution is just not possible anymore). Additionally, Kurten pointed out that the pseudoscientist sets out to prove something; he or she has a preconceived notion of what really exists, and unlike a real scientist his or her mind is closed to alternative possibilities. By way of contrast Kurten provided an example of a successful revolution, of a theory that was met with a lot of skepticism at first but was later accepted, that of plate tectonics. The remaining chapters dealt more specifically with issues and ideas in paleontology, with essays on the geological and paleontological history of the Mediterranean Sea (which I thought was a bit too brief), ancient natural oil spills, the science and politics of _Archaeopteryx_, the process whereby mammoths and other Pleistocene mammals were preserved more or less intact, and the first Europeans (I found that chapter a bit technical). One of my favorite chapters dealt with an unusual 20 million year old fossil, that of a Miocene rhinoceros of the genus _Diceratherium_, discovered in 1935 in Grant County, Washington state. The fossil was found by hikers, who thought at first that they had found a very odd cave with some bone fragments. Upon investigation it was discovered that the cave was a mold of an extinct rhinoceros, one apparently formed when flowing lava engulfed the (apparently bloated) carcass of the animal, a mold not unlike those found at Pompeii. Kurten discussed how the lava was able to p