Horror has always been interwoven with science—ever since Professor Van Helsing in Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) asserted (about vampirism) that the “superstition of yesterday can become the scientific reality of today.” So it’s no surprise that the recent spate of woolly mammoth carcasses, emerging from thawing permafrost mostly in Siberia, should coincide with the appearance of the woolly mammoth in horror film and TV—specifically (to date) The Thaw (Mark A. Lewis, 2009) and the TV series Fortitude (2015), produced by Sky Atlantic and broadcast in the US on Pivot January to April, 2015.
