Dr Tori Herridge, a palaeobiologist at London's Natural History Museum, warned that the dream of reviving the woolly mammoth would be a cruel nightmare for its modern descendant. Photo / Thinkstock
Will woolly mammoths stride the Siberian plains again? DNA samples from an exceptionally well-preserved extinct Mammuthus found in Siberia, have raised the prospect of cloning.
But scientists are divided about raising the species from the dead, 10,000 years after it became extinct.
Russian scientists were amazed at the condition of
the mammoth, found embedded in a chunk of ice on a remote island. The samples were so well preserved that fresh blood was found in muscle tissue. The team used carbon dating to reveal it lived about 40,000 years ago and raised hopes it could be cloned.
Nicknamed Buttercup, the adult female was discovered in May 2013. At 2.5m tall, she is not much larger than an Asian elephant. Incredibly, three legs, most of her body, some of her head and her trunk survived. She was in probably her 50s when she became trapped in a peat bog.
South Korean researchers from the Sooam biotech company hope to find a cell with a complete nucleus, containing an intact genome that could be used for cloning.
