Thursday, September 20, 2007

Climate Change and Mammoth Bones

Mammoth bones worth money? Maybe that could be part of a mystery novel if anybody would write it.

Making a mint from Artic mammoths - Environment - smh.com.au: "One day, climate change could cost the earth. For now, it is a nice little earner for Russian hunter Alexander Vatagin.

In Siberia's northernmost reaches, high up in the Arctic Circle, the changing temperature is thawing out the permafrost to reveal the bones of prehistoric animals such as mammoths, woolly rhinos and lions that have been buried for thousands of years.

Private collectors and scientific institutes will pay huge sums for the right specimen, and bone-prospectors such asVatagin have turned this region, eight time zones from Moscow, into a palaeontological goldmine.

'Last year someone was paid 800,000 roubles [$37,000] for a mammoth head with two tusks in great condition,' Vatagin said."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

ya know, i've always been a little suspicious of all the ice that's on this planet. getting rid of it could be a real boon. who knows what's being covered up by it. it makes you wonder what all the panic is all about regarding global warming. What is it they don't want us to find? who put all the ice there in the first place? what's being covered up? talk aboutchyer story fodder: this is mega. with a capital m.

Cap'n Bob said...

SO you do know what a capital is, even if you can't type it. Attaboy, Goober.

Anonymous said...

i wrote it with you in mind, casper.