Mammoth Time Lapse

“Long Shorts” – short films that exemplify long-term thinking.  Please submit yours in the comments section…

This video is part of the Mammoths and Mastodons exhibit at The Field Museum in Chicago, and was the Long Short for our Seminar with Nils Gilman.

It’s a reverse time lapse put together by Greg Mercer and Emily Ward (editing), and David Quednau (animation). Unwinding 20,000 years of a modern American city and frontier outposts, Native American settlements and the last ice age, we arrive in their world and resurrect them in film.

Perhaps most interesting is that this film is not the only place mammoths can now come alive, but also as Stewart points out, it is now possible to take the DNA of mammoths, blend them with elephants and usher in their return.

And I just noticed there was a segment on just this at 60 Minutes this last weekend, Resurrecting The Extinct.

Final note: If you are in Chicago between now and September 6, 02010, take time to also visit the new 3D film of their T. Rex, lovingly named Sue.  Apparently she escaped a little while ago and the museum documented the ordeal.

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The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.

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