Preface to the English translation

In October 1992 at a workshop at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, Illinois, USA focusing on Quaternary paleozoology in the Northern Hemisphere and including participants from the former Soviet Union, Dr. Nikolai Vereshchagin and Alexei Tikhonov approached the English editor with the idea of offering their Russian book, “The Figure of the Mammoth,” to a wider audience through the publication of an English language translation. The idea was viewed favourably by me and Mary Elizabeth McLendon, who was assisting with English-Russian translations for the workshop participants, immediately and enthusiastically agreed to take on the task of the translation. In this she was assisted by Shannon Jumper, Liudmila Belobrova, and Faith Beane in Kirksville, Missouri, and Tatyana Platonova in St. Petersburg, Russia. The translation was “science spot-proofed” by Dr. John Hoffecker in Boulder, Colorado. The book’s junior author, Tikhonov, took the lead in Russia after the workshop in answering my questions concerning meaning or ambiguities, discussing these with Vereshchagin, then communicating their joint resolution to me. Dr. Gary Haynes, Reno, Nevada, acted as an outside reader and I thank him for his comments that improved the stylistic flow and clarity of the translation. I heartily thank Dr. John de Vos and Dick Mol in The Netherlands for their enthusiastic support for publishing this translation in the journal Cranium, which I view to be both an appropriate venue for the book and technically an unsurpassed vehicle through which to disseminate in English (with a Dutch summary) the author’s discussions and views. During the several years this project has been in development the small book in pre-print has received much attention and favourable comment, for example its discussion of the most famous mammoth mummies. No where else in the English language is there available such a concise and precise summary of major Russian mammoth discoveries and Russian views on the subject. The authors are among the primary contributors to these studies in Russia-Vereshchagin excavated the primary mammoth “cemetery” site of Berelekh and Tikhonov took the lead in recovering the Yamal baby mammoth-and it is with pleasure that I look forward to the appearance of their “Exterior of the Mammoth.”