Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe

Rating:
Summary: A shame it's out of print . . . highly, highly recommended
Review: Starting with a 36,000-year-old bison mummy washed out of ancient permafrost by a gold miner, zoologist and paleontologist R. Dale Guthrie discusses the events that led to Blue Babe's death and the preservation of his carcass.

That's what a bare-bones summary of this book would be, but that doesn't do it justice. In a clear, readable (but not grammar-school) style, Guthrie wanders through related subjects such as frozen mammoths, the ecology and behavior of "Ice-Age" steppe bison, wild horses, mammoths and even Alaskan lions, and how Blue Babe probably looked in life -- and makes them fascinating.

Readers may have trouble understanding chapters 8 and 9 of this book if they haven't read "Paleoecology of Beringia", another out-of-print gem which anthologizes the work of several paleontologists. Guthrie is a proponent of the "Mammoth Steppe" theory, which holds that during the Pleistocene most of Alaska and Siberia were not covered by soggy tundra or coniferous trees but by a cold, dry steppe or brushland that could support mammoths, horses, bison and other large grazers. In these two chapters, he turns away from Blue Babe to tackle and refute the objections raised by two other scientists in "Paleoecology..." (successfully, in my non-scientist opinion).

I suspect most readers will find this the dullest part of the book, but it's hard to discuss the big animals of the Pleistocene without talking about why they could exist then but are extinct or much rarer in our warmer modern world.

Rating:
Summary: A superb look at the excavation, history of an ice-age bison
Review: Written in a clear and enjoyable style, this book's description of the discovery, excavation, and the background of Blue Babe, a 35,000-year-old bison from Alaska's late Pleistocene is complete with many color and B&W photos as well as explanatory line-drawings. The discovery was made in 1979 about 15 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska, at a goldmining operation. For the reader interested in ice-age mammals, how such specimens are found, recovered, and prepared for exhibition, this book is a good general guide through those stages. Dr. Guthrie has a long and outstanding career studying the Pleistocene mammals of Alaska, and his expertise and experience in explaining such topics to the lay-reader comes through well.