So a Japanese Scientist Wants to Resurrect the Woolly Mammoth
Photo: 20th Century Fox  A two-year-old technique of retrieving
nuclei from long-frozen cells may result in the resurrection of
a species that has been extinct for thousands of years. Using
advances made by a Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, one Japanese scientist
at Kyoto University is lobbying to try to use ancient biological
material to clone a woolly mammoth. This is actually a
resurrection of a campaign the professor Akira Iritani launched
in the nineties, when the technology wasn't there to get the job
done. "Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we
need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth," he
told the Daily Telegraph. Using the egg cells of a surrogate
African elephant, the nuclei could someday grow up to be an
actual living mammoth. Iritani imagines he could impregnate such
an elephant in two years, with a baby born two years later
(elephants have long pregnancies).  Um, first of all, why are we
starting with species