My research for this book took me to the Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe; the Chobe National Park, Botswana; the George C. Page Museum at the Rancho La Brea tar pits, Los Angeles County; the Natural History Museum, London; and the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.
C. I’m indebted to Eric Brown for reading the manuscript, and for feedback to Dr. Adrian Lister of the Department of Biology, University College, London. Dr. Lister’s masterly book, Mammoths (Macmillan, 1994), was an essential resource, as was Gary Haynes’ Mammoths, Mastodons andElephants (Cambridge University Press, 1991). Any errors, omissions, or misinterpretations are, of course, mine.
It is a frozen world.
To the south there are forests. But to the north the trees—hundred-year-old spruce barely six feet tall, stunted by cold and wind—grow ever more thinly scattered, until they peter out altogether.
And beyond, where it is too cold for the hardiest tree, there is only the tundra: an immense, undulating plain, a white monotony broken by splinters of rock. Very little snow falls here, but unimpeded winds whip up ice crystals, giving the illusion of frequent blizzards. Even the outcropping rock has been shattered by millennia of frost to a rough, unstable scree.
