Capsule Reviews

How to Clone a Mammoth, The Upright Thinkers, The Thirteenth Step, and Humankind

Written byBob Grant

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Beth Shapiro
Princeton University Press, April 2015

The majestic mammoth will never again roam the Earth. That is, unless we want it to. As University of California, Santa Cruz, ancient-DNA researcher Beth Shapiro explains in How to Clone a Mammoth, the scientific know-how exists to accomplish such goals of “de-extinction.”

From her front-row seat as one of the pioneers of ancient-DNA research, Shapiro explains the fieldwork, lab science, and prospective ecology involved with the so-far hypothetical endeavor. As paleogenomic science has progressed to the point that cloning a mammoth has become possible (sort of), such propositions have also attracted controversy. Shapiro calls herself “an enthusiastic realist,” writing that while recklessly resurrecting bygone species for Jurassic Park jollies would be “scientifically and ethically unjustified,” de-extinction has ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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