Somewhere in Mammoth Hunt (HarperCollins, £16.99, ISBN 0 00 255672 3)
is a good story about a population of elephants in Nepal with craggy heads that
seem to resemble the ancestors of modern elephants. Adrian Blashford-Snell and
the glamorous Rula Lenska set out to find them, and Adrian Lister, a real
scientist, went along to check DNA from the living elephants’ dung, comparing it
with fossil bones of the ancestral Elephas hysudricus, and so on. Not quite like
finding a mammoth, but great stuff. Sadly, the tale gets lost among cold lagers
and “mouthwatering sauces”. I wish publishers would learn that good biology
needs no dilution with by-the-yard travelogue.
More from ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ
Explore the latest news, articles and features
Popular articles
Trending ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ articles
1
The best new science-fiction books of June 2026
2
Pancreatic cancer halted by virus injection in three patients
3
Does gravity create reality? A shocking path to a theory of everything
4
Glaciers in the 'roof of the world' have suddenly started melting
5
Photons behave very strangely if you try to cut them
6
Millions of planets might form around supermassive black holes
7
The ‘doomsday’ glacier’s giant ice shelf is about to break away
8
How a radical new view of life could reveal its origin – and aliens
9
Why autism pioneer Uta Frith wants to dismantle the spectrum
10
'The book is in the future, but everything is seeded from our present'
