Cloned Species

Each new woolly mammoth carcass to emerge from the Siberian permafrost triggers a flurry of speculation about resurrecting this Ice Age giant. Researchers have refined at least some of the tools needed to turn that hope into reality. Last November, when a team led by Teruhiko Wakayama, a reproductive biologist based in Kobe, Japan, reported it had cloned mice that had been frozen for 16 years, the scientists conjectured that the same techniques might open the door to cloning mammoths and other extinct species preserved in permafrost. Talk of cloning surged again a few weeks later when a group at Pennsylvania State University, led by Webb Miller and Stephan C. Schuster, published 70 percent of the mammoth genome, laying out much of the basic data that might be required to make a mammoth.

"I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable," says Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient DNA who served as a scientific consultant for a film about the making of Jurassic Park. "But I'm not laughing anymore, at least about mammoths. This is going to happen. It's just a matter of working out the details."