For those who would love a Mammuthus primigenius for Christmas as much as I would, click here!
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December 23rd, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Thanks for the laugh! For some reason a mammoth seems less absurd than most of the “Christmas” stuff going on.
December 23rd, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Thanks!
Though on a serious note, many generations of our ancestors faced daily dangers like this such as severe weather and predation, risky hunting and uncertain food supplies. Sitting in my nice, safe, warm house and looking at this makes me appreciate all we have.
December 23rd, 2006 at 4:09 pm
I absolutely adore this! My boyfriend works with elephants and I can’t wait to show him this picture of an ancient ancestor of one!
December 23rd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
The comment thingy cut off my Holiday wishes, sooooo….
Happy Winter Holiday of your Choice!
December 23rd, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Happy Holidays everyone. I was going to write more, but I wanted to get the “Card” posted. Darmok: You wrote just about exactly what I would have said. I really don’t think we - and I include myself - understand and appreciate just how easy we’ve got it. I loved painting this Mammoth image, because I didn’t have to do it on a cave wall. I wish they had lived a little longer however. I’ve been lucky enough to be up-close and personal (I even got “goosed” by one) with elephants and I’m so glad I’m living at a time when I can look at them as the intelligent, sensitve “beings” they are, and not as a food source or spirit totem.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:10 pm
That’s wonderful.
And, you know, some of us would pay good money for seasonal cards with a mammoth on the front. Perhaps some museum or worthy cause could adopt your image, pay you a fat royalty, and print up the cards for next year — have you sought anyone out on this?
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:23 pm
[...] Olduvai George is just wonderful; go see his card. [...]
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:47 pm
“Okay, so it was just one BIG wise man.”
Terrific piece. I love the snow effect. And the way the thing fades into the snowy background is incredible. The detail of the face, the symmetry of the tusks … Wow.
I’m picturing a boxed set of 20 cards, 4 or 5 different designs. Could be different Ice Age mammals. Could be just different groupings and angles of mammoths. I’d buy either one.
Heh. I’m picturing an Ice Age version of the Nativity scene, with giant ground sloths, short-faced bears, etc. grouped around a cave opening, with “Mammoth Mary” and the baby mammoth in the center, lit by a slight glow and with trunks entertwined.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Or how about a huge Borophagus or Amphicyonid lying in front of a snow-covered tree, scratching vigorously at its neck with a hind leg.
And the caption reads “Fleas Navidad.”
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:52 pm
[...] Olduvai George has created my favorite Christmas card of 2006. [...]
December 23rd, 2006 at 7:08 pm
That is one beautiful “Winterval” card!
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Next year: Cafepress OGeorge Xmas cards. OG, just do it!
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:45 pm
[...] Happy Holidays (or Merry Christmas if you prefer) from Florida Citizens for Science to all of you! If I could send out a card to you, I think this would be my choice. Enjoy. [...]
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:50 pm
George,
I just sent that (well, link to this page, actually) to everyone I needed to send cards to. And I would gladly like to make a donation to you (or the charity of your choice) for having access to it. Let me know. Others here might like the same option.
Responses have been very positive!
Jim D
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:57 pm
By the way, it reminds me of a photo my wife took on our honeymoon, in Yellowstone. I was snapping photos in one direction, when I looked back she was about 15 feet away from a bison . . . wonderful photo of a bison with snow and frost on its hump — our first Christmas card. I avoided a heart attack, and the buffalo didn’t charge. It was a miracle!
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:59 pm
I can feel the cold simply from the picture. Wonderful!
I hope you and yours and all the rest have a wonderful and joyous holiday season!
December 23rd, 2006 at 11:34 pm
This does make my Holidays happy. Thank you very much.
December 24th, 2006 at 1:00 am
I strongly second Hank Fox’s suggestions — including the Borophagus or Amphicyonid!
And thank you for such a lovely virtual card for the holidays.
December 24th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Help me put together The Anthology of the Best Science Blogging!…
You may have seen (or even bought and read) those annual collections of science-related articles that were published in print press over a course of a year, e.g., The Best American Science Writing 2006 or The Best American Science and……
December 24th, 2006 at 4:03 am
[...] Olduvai George just posted a nice little holiday card at his blog, commemorating the celebrations many cultures have near the winter solstice (in the Northern hemisphere—it’s the summer solstice in the Southern hemisphere). [...]
December 24th, 2006 at 9:10 am
Inspired. Those of us brought up on pre-Disneyfied Winnie the Pooh would have no trouble identifying that as the ancestor to a Heffalump.
December 24th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Carl, that is so cool I could plotz. Merry Squidmas!!
December 24th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Happy Holidaze to All…
The nice thing about email is that, like owl post, I can receive mail on weekends and holidays. …
December 25th, 2006 at 2:15 am
Love it, have passed the link to our local SF club.
Seasons greetings and glad to see your work!
December 25th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
I wish the mammoths were still here ,and saber-toothed tigers as well. Our lives are less rich for their absence. This picture is so beautiful, it makes me miss them even more. Seasons Greetings from the pacific northwest, where mammoth bones lie buried in the earth in the foothill of the Olympics.
December 25th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Merry Christmas!!!!
December 25th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
` That would make such a wonderful Christmas card! Have a Flappy New Year!
December 26th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Our museum (Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota) is blessed by owning and displaying many of Carl’s mammoths…Columbian, woolly and pygmy, but this Holiday Season woolly is gorgeous! The colors, along the mist effect, captures our imagination…or stirs some ancient memories. You can almost hear him breathe. Thanks, Carl, for all your beautiful work and for teaching everyone how beautiful mammoths were (or in your art, ARE)! Kathy Anderson
January 16th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Why not a mammoth ? Why not, indeed. There are serious efforts underway in Japan to to find frozen cells whose nuclei might be useable for transfer into elephant eggs, thus leading to the cloning of a mammoth. There are tons of problems associated with this, not the least of which are probable degradation of mammoth DNA even if nuclei could be found or the fact that no one has ever done an embryo transfer into an elephant. But then again 20 years ago dogma stated that adult animals couldn’t be cloned at all. And then there was Dolly…..
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
A mammoth is not just for Christmas, but for a lifetime!
This quote comes from extremely funny book called “How to keep dinosaurs” by Robert Mash. It is very similar in feel to your website - and worth recommending to anybody interested in fossil animals. You may be interested in it. Well, actually it is a pet dinosaur which is not for Christmas…
BTW - what do you feel about “research” published about two weeks ago? They “calculated” limit of size of warm-blooded carnivore as ca 1100kg. I just recall several larger carnivorous mammals… And discovery of feathers means that big theropods were warm-blooded, too.
January 25th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
It’s a time machine!…
Chris Clarke has a new banner on Creek Running North, so of course he has to give us a grand tour of the Pleistocene. It’s a Carl Buell original, you know — it’s becoming quite the coup to get……
January 26th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Give us whales, or we kneecap you.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Looking forward to see and read you again! Thanks for sharing those great pictures with us. Hope you had a good start into 2007! Peter
February 15th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Hey Carl, can’t wait until you get some more posts up (not so subtle hint), and email me when you have a moment. I lost most of email addresses last month and would like to have your’s again.
February 15th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
I was really looking forward to a Valentine card. Love you lots! Maggie
February 21st, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Me want whales.
April 7th, 2007 at 1:15 am
` Please do make another post! About anything! Whales or no! I just made a post having (partly) to do with the old guy who tried to escape the nursing home next door by jumping out of his window and into our back yard! Anything amuses me!
` Please tell us you’re not locked up away somewhere or dead! WE LOVE YOU!!!
April 18th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Thank you for sharing your art with us
Once a week I come here, hoping in some new wanderful drawing
I need to report you something that sound as a little abuse for your drawing about Thylacine and Dingo:
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/53313665/
May 6th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Went to the British Museum of Natural History last week.
They got a Thylacine and a Celocanth. I heard they had a Dodo, but all I saw were mock-ups.
COOOL!
May 25th, 2007 at 5:40 am
Have you abandoned your blog? Too bad, I was hoping for an update and some more beautiful pictures! There is a movie I wanted to reccomand to you, but the explanation is kinda long so bear with me: I’m currently in Australia as an exchange-student, and one of my lecturers is a paleontologist (Steve Salibury).During a field course he arranged a screening of a movie he helped make about Australian dinosaurs.
The movie is called “The Terrible Lizards of Oz”, here is a link to some info. http://www.vea.com.au/Product.aspx?id=871. Check it out,and take care 
That made me think of your blog, and I decided to leave you a note
June 15th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
` Well, if you’re not dead, you’re too late to put anything up ’cause now I’m dead!
December 19th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Time passes, but the wishes stay the same:
Best wishes!
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:24 am
Carl,
Awesome! This mammoth is your all-time best! I’ll take two boxes of 24 cards, blank inside, only change the front to say “Dashing through the snow”.
Your art (and you) never cease to amaze me.
April 27th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I really enjoy your paintings! Especially this one! I miss you tons and I hope I can see you soon!!!
June 4th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
You’re a first class artist why aren’t we seeing more of you work? This picture is something as an artist myself, I could only dream of doing.
August 2nd, 2009 at 6:13 pm
you should have a book with your collected works, especially since you focus on beasts from all times. they are just lovely.
December 13th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
This is a timeless piece of art with an exquisite detail to the Mammoth. You made it seem as if it were right in front of you, emerging from the snow. The picture is painted beautifully with so much detail given to the snowy fur.
March 10th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
thanks for that