Ben Mezrich - Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History’s Most Iconic Extinct Creatures

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ALSO BY BEN MEZRICH

The 37th Parallel

Once Upon a Time in Russia

Bringing Down the House

Ugly Americans

Busting Vega$

Rigged

The Accidental Billionaires

Sex on the Moon

Straight Flush

The X-Files: Skin

Fertile Ground

Threshold

Reaper

Seven Wonders

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Copyright 2017 by Ben Mezrich

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First Atria Books hardcover edition July 2017

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Interior design by Joy OMeara

Jacket design by Tierney and Wood, LLC

Author photograph by Eric Levin

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mezrich, Ben, 1969

Title: Woolly : the true story of the quest to revive one of historys most iconic extinct creatures / Ben Mezrich.

Description: New York : Atria Books, 2017. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017010876 (print) | LCCN 2017012621 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501160417 (E-book) | ISBN 9781501135552 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501135569 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Woolly mammoth. | Extinct animalsCloning. | Extinct animalsGenetics.

Classification: LCC QE882.P8 (ebook) | LCC QE882.P8 M49 2017 (print) | DDC 591.68dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010876

ISBN 978-1-5011-3555-2

ISBN 978-1-5011-3557-6 (ebook)

To Asher and Arya,

who will grow up in a world filled with Woolly Mammoths

Woolly is a dramatic narrative account based on numerous interviews, multiple first-person sources, and hundreds of pages of articles. In some instances, settings have been changed, and certain descriptions and characters have been altered to protect privacy. I employ the technique of re-created dialogue, based on the recollection of participants who were there, various diaries and files, and newspaper accounts, doing my best to communicate the substance of these conversations, especially in scenes taking place years ago.

Very often, as I wander through life, Ill get that old feeling that Ive come back from the future, and Im living in the past. And its a really horrible feeling.

GEORGE M. CHURCH

The rewards for biotechnology are tremendousto solve disease, eliminate poverty, age gracefully. It sounds so much cooler than Facebook.

GEORGE M. CHURCH

Three thousand years ago

WRANGEL ISLAND.

An eighty-mile-wide swath of volcanic rock, gravel, and permafrost jutting out from the Arctic Ocean, ninety miles off the coast of Siberia, windswept and forbidding. Gray on gray on gray, a forgotten stretch of beach covered in a thick mist, the air heavy with the spray from waves crashing through the loose ice beyond the breakers.

A little after 5:00 a.m., the calf opens his eyes.

Even though his mother is only a few yards away, splayed out against a makeshift nest of dry reeds that she has gathered from the underbrush deeper toward the center of the island, the calf feels strangely alone. The rest of his herdtwenty-five strong, arranged along a matriarchal line that stretches back through three generationshas already begun a short pilgrimage down the coast. Being separated from the bulk of the herd feels unnatural. A mild illness has briefly kept his mother from engaging in the routines of survival on the island, so shes stayed behind as the herd has set out to search for more sources of drinkable water and grazing. At less than a year old, the calf has remained with his mother, his familial bonds and youthful needs overcoming his developing social instincts. But neither nature nor nurture makes sitting around waiting for her to get back to her full energy any easier.

The calf pushes himself to his feet, the thick muscles in his enormous legs trembling with the effort. His size already makes rising from the ground a bit of an ordeal. He weighed over two hundred pounds at birth and even then stood over three feet tall. Now, though he is far from fully grown, he weighs well over a thousand pounds.

He shakes his head back and forth, shedding reeds and bits of snow and ice that gathered over him as he slept. His mother is still lying on her left side against the ground in front of him, her huge body rising and falling as each breath sends clouds of condensation through the frozen air. As big as the calf is, his mother is a veritable mountain, five, maybe six tons, and more than twice his height. It is no wonder that his kind often naps standing up. When they do sleep flat against the ground, it is usually for periods of no more than four to five hours.

The calf watches his mother for a few minutes, then kicks the last bits of ice off his legs and starts forward down a gentle, gravelly slope that leads toward the beach.

Each heavy step sends tremors up and down his body, as his huge feet compress and churn the frozen ground. The wind howls around him, pushing his tiny, round ears flat against the sides of his head, but he continues forward, his eyes searching the turned permafrost beneath him for bits of grass, moss, roots. As he nears the bottom of the slope, he starts to feel the spray from the waves that crash against the large volcanic rocks making up much of the coast; the water feels good against his body, the glistening, bluish drops beading against the long strands of thick red hair that cover most of his hide.

Despite the wind, the icy water, the cold, the calf is not uncomfortable. Though it is a harsh environment, he and his herd are uniquely suited for it; in fact, for thousands of years, Wrangel Island has enabled the huge animals to survive and thrive.