The woolly mammoth, extinct for thousands of years, could be brought back to life in as little as four years thanks to a breakthrough in cloning technology.Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold.
But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years.
Now that hurdle has been overcome, Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago.
The nuclei will then be inserted into the egg cells of an African elephant, which will act as the surrogate mother for the mammoth.
Professor Iritani said he estimates that another two years will be needed before the elephant can be impregnated, followed by the approximately 600-day gestation period.
The Professor will travel to Siberia this summer to search for just a 3cm squ: piece of Mammoth soft tissue
If he cannot find a Mammoth, he will ask the Russians for a little of their Mammoth tissue.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8257223/Mammoth-could-be-reborn-in-four-years.htmlThoughts*****
Wow if Prof: Iritani pulls this one off, he will have to contend with hundreds of thousands, prehaps millions of
site-seeing visitors, who will all want to look at a living Prehistoric Mammoth.
Where will they keep him? It will need loads of fresh growing green veggy's daily.
