Pleistocene park
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Pleistocene Park in Sakha region in northern Siberia is an attempt initiated by Russian researcher Sergey Zimov to reproduce the ecosystem that flourished during the last ice age, with hopes to back his theory that hunting, and not climate change, destroyed the wildlife.
Russian scientists are restoring the old ecosystem with plants and animals that thrived in the region 10,000 years ago. Japanese and Russian scientists hope to clone woolly mammoths, and to re-introduce them to the park. However, they yet have yet to find intact mammoth DNA to use for cloning.
At this time, the scientific crew had introduced successfully reindeers, musk oxen and yakut horses in the region, and the introduction of American bisons (instead of the extinct steppe bisons) is ongoing. Future introductions include saiga antelopes, yaks, and specially bred lions and spotted hyenas.
[edit] Similar projects
- There are "Bronze Age Parks" in Britain. In these sites, people can see reproductions of proto-historic tools, fields and houses. Farms are inhabited by "Bronze Age pigs" (offspring of wild boars and domestic pigs), and there are feral cattle and Przewalski's horses grazing in the near areas.
- In 2005, ecologist Josh Donlan, from Cornell University, exposed a polemical plan to built a Pleistocene Park on the North American great plains in 50 years. The species proposed to reintroduction include the Bolson Tortoise, dromedary (for American camel), Przewalski's horse, cheetah (for Miracinonyx), lion (for American lion) and Indian elephant (for Columbian Mammoth).
[edit] Pleistocene parks in fiction
The name "Pleistocene Park" appeared several times in pure sci-fi stories. One example is novel "Pleistocene Redemption" by Dan Gallagher. These fictional stories resembling Jurassic Park are very dissimilar to Siberian project.
