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Maria diploei? As project director, what do you think?"

"I think that Ms Janos has offered a solution that we can all live with"

"There's a quid pro quo," she said "Maybe you can help me with my project"

"My apologies," Dr Sato said "We've been so self-absorbed with our own issues that we've become impolite What exactly do you hope to find here?"

"An answer to the riddle of the mammoth"

"The Pleistocene extinction?" Maria said

Karla nodded "Picture this island twenty thousand years ago The land outside our tent was green with vegetation The earth shook with the thunder made by the feet of vast herds of Mam thereat herds roa back more than three million years They were in North America, from North Carolina to Alaska, in most of Russia and Europe, and even in Britain and Ireland But by eight thousand BC, they were nearly gone, except for re with hundreds of other species, leaving their frozen bones to puzzle scientists like us"

"The extinction is one of the greatest mysteries in the world," Maria said "Maers-all disappeared froo, along with nearly two hundred other species of large lobal

scale What do you hope to find here?"

"I'm not sure," Karla said "As you know, there are three theories explaining the extinction The first is that the Clovis people hunted them to extinction"

"The main problem with that theory is that it doesn't explain the extinction in the rest of the world," Arbatov said

"There is also no fossil evidence to support this idea, so we h the mammal populations of the world"

"So you think the virus theory is the most plausible?" Dr Sato said

"Yes and no I'll get back to it after we discuss the third theory, drastic clied suddenly But that theory has a big hole in it Creatures on a number of islands survived They would have died out if the extinction eather related"

"So if it wasn't overhunting, or a virus or cliei said