One recent discovery has rekindled the debate in spectacular fashion. In 1993 Russian scientists reported discovering mammoths that became extinct 3,700 years ago -- barely 1,700 years B.C. -- on Wrangel Island, 140 miles off the coast of eastern Siberia. This extends by more than 6,000 years the survival of a species we thought had vanished from the surface of the earth by the end of the Pleistocene. Mammoths are symbols of Quaternary periods and witnesses to the adventures of the great Paleolithic hunters. That they could have survived to be the contemporaries of the pharaohs of Egypt puts the issue of their extinction in a new light.
