Yet here are a bunch of scientists announcing their plans to bring back the mammoth. Remember those big, woolly beasts, with the tusks and the footsteps that sounded like Richter scale-breaking earthquakes? No? Well, there's a good reason for that. They haven't been around for a few million years!
For my money, that's the way it should stay. Can you imagine a bunch of mammoths getting loose from the zoo or wherever these Japanese scientists are planning the new not-so-wee beasties? Rampage City! (And no, that's not a new release by some punk or alternative band.)
I blame Dolly. That blasted cloned sheep made headlines a few years ago, and now cloning is all the rage. We're cloning mice (even some that can tweet like birds). Really, where does it end?
See, the researchers have found some tissue samples. Unlike the dinosaur cloning fictionally popularized in Michael Crichton's novel, which couldn't take place in real life because the only dinosaur remains we have are fossils, these mammoths can be created out still-usable tissue, placed in an elephant (after the proper DNA manipulations, of course), and brought to fruition a few months later — Viola! Woolly at your service. That's probably OK, as far as biology and genetics go, because the mammoth is really just an ancestor of the modern pachyderm anyway. The female elephant in question probably won't even know the difference. (Yeah, right: tell it to the mother who has to bear that big woolly beast.)
Then, there's the question of where the team of scientists is going to keep these mammoths. All that big woolly fur was there for a reason — to keep the animal warm in the harsh winter climates the mammoth called home. Japan does have its wintry parts, but it's not exactly known for its bone-crushing cold the way Siberia is.
The scientists say that, what with experimentation and trial-and-error, they're probably five years away from success. That gives us plenty of time to run for the hills.
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