Instead of Jurassic Park, try Pleistocene Park. A team of
scientists from Japan, Russia and the United States hopes to
clone a mammoth, a symbol of Earth’s ice age that ended 12,000
years ago, according to a report in Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun. The
researchers say they hope to produce a baby mammoth within six
years. The scientists say they will extract DNA from a mammoth
carcass that has been preserved in a Russian laboratory and
insert it into the egg cells of an African elephant in hopes of
producing a mammoth embryo. The team is being led by Akira
Iritani, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University in Japan. He
has built upon research from Teruhiko Wakayama of Kobe's Riken
Center for Developmental Biology, who successfully cloned a
mouse from cells that had been frozen for 16 years, to devise a
technique to extract egg nuclei without damaging them, according
to the Yomiuri report. The U.S. researchers are in vitro
fertilization experts. They, along with Kinki University
professor Minoru Miyashita, will be res