Editorial Notebook: When Mammoths Fly

Last week Russia proved that while it can't achieve macroeconomic stability or keep a Prime Minister for more than three months, it can--amazingly--make an elephant fly. Well, sort of.

As the scientific eyes of the world--and a few well-placed network cameras--watched, Russian scientists used a helicopter to extract a twenty-ton block of ice from the permafrost of Siberia. The block, believed to contain the fully intact remains of a 23,000 year-old woolly mammoth, was transported to Moscow where it now sits in a permanently frozen cave awaiting further scientific examination.

But that's not the end of the story. Banking on the probability that the giant mammoth popsicle would pique the interest of the international community--or at least divert some attention away from the vodka-loving President and the ongoing civil war in Chechnya--the Russian scientists in charge of the excavation decided to stage a bit of a show.

First, although the mammoth's head had been excavated in previous weeks, the scientists reattached the tusks to the block of ice before the helicopter transport. The result was something akin to Dumbo the flying ice cube--a press spectacle just awe-inspiring enough to make any avid watcher of the Discovery Channel cry.

Then came the Jurassic Park rumors. Larry Agenbrod, a Northern Arizona University mammal expert working on the excavation team, said he had been approached by U.S. cryogenics firms interested in cloning the mammoth by combining elephant DNA with DNA extracted from the mammoth remains.

But, alas, just when youngsters of the world had gotten their hopes up that future field trips to the zoo might be a little more fun, Russian zoologist Alexei Tikhonov announced that he believed the block of ice really contained nothing more than a couple of hairballs and a few bones. The strangest twist of all, though, was Tikhonov's suggestion of what should be done with the maybe-mammoth-maybe-algae-filled block of ice.

"In my opinion it's better to keep the block as it is in its museum [and not investigate its contents], because if we try to take it apart and then find some pounds of wool and two or three mammoth bones, all the journalists will be very sad," Tikhonov said.

So much for science.

Indeed, perhaps the greatest lesson that can be learned from the spectacle--if large chunks of the Siberian tundra can teach a lesson at all--is that publicity stunts and natural history just don't mix.

Much to the chagrin of the world's leading paleontologists, there's a good reason why Leonardo DiCaprio and Goldie Hawn have face recognition and they don't. Dress a movie star up, spread a few rumors about them being cloned and all that's lost is some ink and a few pages of the National Enquirer. Do the same to a mammoth-cicle and 23,000 years of data may end up forever frozen in order to appease the desires of the masses.