A few examples will prove my point. The first concerns the difficulty in removing the block of permafrost that encased the mammoth. It is hard to believe that the scientists involved would have left to chance the matter of whether or not the block was too large to be lifted by the helicopter at hand, as was portrayed. Surely calculations giving them some reasonable hope of success were in hand or some other method of removal would have been pursued, but the last-minute suspense was played to the hilt like a Bruce Willis thriller.

At one point we are told that the Siberian Woolly Mammoth stood twice the height of a man and weighed as much as 10 elephants. Almost immediately following we are told that the Columbian Mammoth, prospering in the milder climates of North America, was the largest of mammoth species and stood twice the height of a man and weighed as much as 10 elephants. Which is true? How could the largest of the mammoth species be the same size and weight as a lesser member? And why were we repeatedly treated to truly substandard animations of mammoths that surely did nothing to "bring them to life"?

Most bothersome to me were the glossing of various significant mammoth theories--mention was made that Man may have played a part in the extinction of the mammoth, but there was no discussion of how. The documentary implied that Early man, hunting with spears in groups and picking off an occasional weakened mammoth would cause an extinction, but surely this isn't the case. (In fact, modern research shows rabbit to be the most common meat in early man's diet.) But the hunting of entire herds, through burning plains and driving animals over cliffs, is a known tactic that could have lead to an ultimate devastation. This strategy is never mentioned or shown, but instead we are treated to repeated pictures of a single adult mammoth killed by one or two brave hunters with spears.

But what I regret most of all is that the documentary closed without showing us any more of the mammoth than a block of permafrost with tusks (the tusks had been removed originally but were put back in place, sticking out of the block like some Cubist elephant; we are told this was out of respect for the creature but I have to believe production values played an equal part) and a patch of reddish-brown hair the size of a throw rug. Presumably the production deadline closed before the Mammoth was removed, but I was left feeling only slightly more satisfied than when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's "secret" vault and found only an empty glass bottle and a few scraps of trash.