mammoths

While always keeping an eye forward to the future, Popular Science has had a fixation with all things prehistoric. Here, a look back through the archives at a selection of curated articles from the 1930's, 40's and beyond on everything from tar pit fossil traps to prehistoric humans.

Check out the gallery, and the Land of the Lost trailer, here!

Long gone are the days when woolly mammoths roamed the icy North American and Eurasian turf 10,000 years ago. But in the labs of Penn State University they have been resurrected—well, almost.

While you won't see a shaggy, 12-feet-tall mammoth brought back from the dead any time soon (unlike the 16-year-old frozen mice earlier this month), scientists at Penn State are the first to decode almost the entire DNA set of the now extinct species of elephant.

Mammoths are making a mighty big comeback. Last week, there was a stir among scientists when a controversial DNA-based study came out claiming that woolly mammoths have their roots exclusively in North America, since it has long been believed that they roamed from Western Europe to North America. Although the study is still raising eyebrows, many heads have turned to the gigantic discovery in Southern France's Auvergne region of a rare fossilized steppe mammoth skull weighing 1,300 pounds.