In the Ice Age : In the Ice Age (9780307532497) (6 page)

Thudd wanted to tell you more about the Ice Age, but he was busy helping Andrew and Judy get back to their own time. Here’s what he wanted to say:

• When living things die, bacteria eat them. So do molds and funguses. This makes dead things rotten and stinky. And after a while, they turn into dust.
  

  But in special conditions, the hard parts of animals, like bones, absorb minerals in the soil and become hard as stone. We say they have become fossilized. We know most extinct animals only by their fossilized skeletons.
  

  But in some very cold places, people have
  found mammoths that have been frozen for thousands of years. Yet they look as though they died just a few days ago.
  

  That’s because very low temperatures keep bacteria and molds and funguses from growing. That’s why the food in your freezer lasts much longer than food you keep on your kitchen counter or in your refrigerator.
  

  If you didn’t put raw meat into the refrigerator, it would be unsafe to eat in just a few hours. In a day or so, it would get very stinky. But if you wrap the meat up and store it in the freezer, it can last for months.
  

  You can do an experiment. Take three slices of bread. Put each one in a plastic bag and seal it. Keep one slice on your kitchen counter or in your classroom, put one slice in a refrigerator, and put one slice in a freezer.
  

  Check the slices every day and make notes. What does each slice of bread look like after one week, two weeks, three weeks?
  

  You can’t see the bacteria that are eating the bread, but you can see mold, the green or black fuzzy stuff.
  

  It may seem yucky, but we should say a little thank-you to bacteria and molds and funguses. Without these little guys, the Earth would be piled hundreds of miles high with the bodies of dead things. Fortunately, these tiny creatures turn things like dinosaurs and tulips into molecules that go back into the soil to make other living things, such as roses, tomatoes, ladybugs, pandas, kangaroos, whales—and you!
  

• Some people think we could breed new mammoths from the frozen mammoths we’ve discovered. To do that, we would need to find a special molecule called DNA inside the cells of the mammoths.
  

  DNA molecules are information molecules. They give instructions about what living things look like and how they work. A gold-fish
  looks like a goldfish and acts like a goldfish because it has goldfish DNA molecules. It’s true for giraffes and gorillas, too.
  

  Each and every human (except identical twins) has different DNA molecules. Do people tell you that you look like your mom or your dad? Maybe your eyes are blue like your dad’s and maybe you’ve got red hair like your mom. That’s because of the DNA molecules you got from both of them before you were born.
  

  DNA molecules are long and they fall apart after an animal dies. We don’t know how to use the broken DNA molecules from dead mammoths to breed living mammoths—yet. But maybe someday someone will discover a way to do it. Maybe
  you
  will!
  

• Ice Age Mammals of North America: A Guide to the BIG, the HAIRY, and the BIZARRE
  by Ian M. Lange (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2002).
  

• Beyond the Dinosaurs! Sky Dragons, Sea Monsters, Mega-Mammals, and Other Prehistoric Beasts
  by Howard Zimmerman (New York: Atheneum, 2001). Not every bizarre creature that lived millions of years ago was a dinosaur!
  

• Sunset of the Sabertooth
  by Mary Pope Os-borne (New York: Random House Books for Young Readers, 1996). You’ll be holding your breath as Jack and Annie encounter cave bears, woolly mammoths, sabertooth cats— and Ice Age humans!
  

• Sabertooths and the Ice Age
  by Mary Pope
  Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce (New York: Random House Books for Young Readers, 2005). Discover the facts behind the fiction in this non-fiction companion to
  Sunset of the Sabertooth.
  

• Ice Age Mammoth: Will This Ancient Giant Come Back to Life?
  by Barbara Hehner (New York: Crown, 2001).
  

• Ice Age Sabertooth: The Most Ferocious Cat That Ever Lived
  by Barbara Hehner (New York: Crown, 2003). Both of these books will drag you kicking and screaming into the Ice Age. Be sure to wear something warm!
  

Turn the page
for a sneak peek at
Andrew, Judy, and Thudd’s
next exciting adventure—

ANDREW LOST
IN THE GARBAGE!

Available January 2006

“Yerrrrghhh!” groaned ten-year-old Andrew Dubble. He was dragging a heavy black bag through his classroom door. The bag was squirming!

No one else was in the room.

“Wowzers!” said Andrew. “We’ve finally got the place to ourselves.”

Ch … ch … ch … ch … ch!

Angry screams were coming from a cage behind Andrew. It was Harry and Howard, the class guinea pigs.

Andrew felt a poke inside his shirt pocket.

meep …
“Animals afraid, Drewd,” came a squeaky voice.

It was Andrew’s little silver robot and best
friend, Thudd. Thudd was short for The Handy Ultra-Digital Detective.

Andrew looked around the room. A forest of trees reached for the ceiling. Plants with giant leaves pressed against the windows. Plastic hamster trails zigzagged through it all.

A shelf at the back held roomy cages for mice and guinea pigs. A hairy tarantula spider the size of Andrew’s hand lived in a sandy aquarium.

“Don’t worry, Thudd,” said Andrew. “I’ll make sure the Goa Constrictor eats just the garbage.”

Andrew checked the clock on the wall. “The cafeteria ladies said they would bring the garbage at three o’clock,” he said. “We’ve got fifteen minutes to get ready.”

Andrew untied the squirming black bag and pulled a small remote control from his pants pocket. He pressed the Slither Out button.

Ssssssssssss …
came a loud hiss from the bag. A giant brown snake head poked out. It had blinking red lights for eyes. A thin black tongue flicked from its mouth.

Its brown and yellow body slithered slowly out. It was as thick as a wastebasket and as long as a ladder.

Andrew beamed. “Wowzers schnauzers! Isn’t the Goa
beautiful?”

“Yoop! Yoop! Yoop!” said Thudd. “But gotta be careful, Drewd. Remember Atom Sucker.”

Not long ago, Andrew had invented the Atom Sucker. It shrunk things by sucking the empty space out of atoms.

Andrew accidentally shrunk himself so small that he got snuffled into the nose of a dog, flushed down a toilet, and almost eaten by a nasty neighbor.

Andrew laughed. “I’ll never forget
that,”
he said.

“Andrew!” came a voice from the hall. It was Judy, Andrew’s thirteen-year-old cousin!

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2005 by J. C. Greenburg.
Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Jan Gerardi.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House
Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.randomhouse.com/kids/AndrewLost
www.AndrewLost.com

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visit us at
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greenburg, J. C. (Judith C.)
In the Ice Age / by J. C. Greenburg; illustrated by
Jan Gerardi. — 1st ed.
    p. cm. — (Andrew Lost ; 12) “A Stepping Stone book.”
SUMMARY:
Still trying to stop the evil Dr. Kron-Tox, Andrew, his cousin Judy, Thudd the robot, and Beeper find Uncle Al in the Ice Age, where they encounter prehistoric animals, birds, and people.
eISBN: 978-0-307-53249-7
[1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Glacial epoch—Fiction. 3. Prehistoric
animals—Fiction. 4. Prehistoric peoples—Fiction. 5. Cousins—Fiction.]
I. Gerardi, Jan, ill. II. Title. III. Series: Greenburg, J. C. (Judith C).
Andrew Lost ; v 12.
PZ7.G82785Iom 2005     [Fic]—dc22     2005001110

RANDOM HOUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
ANDREW LOST
is a trademark of J. C. Greenburg.

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