Skyrim has mammoths, so will we again… maybe

Trevor Roppolo — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:32:00 GMT

See that picture? That’s genuine mammoth marrow!

Science is cool—and a bunch scientists from the Sakha Republic’s mammoth museum in Russia and the Kinki University in Japan will set out in 2012 to successfully bring the species Mammuthus back to life in a matter of five years’ time.

In August of this year, a thigh bone of a mammoth was found in the Siberian permafrost containing marrow that’s possibly in good enough condition to use to clone the long extinct creature. The plan is—and please excuse the attempt at understanding a complex scientific process—to extract mammoth DNA to be placed in the nuclei of the egg cell of its closest living relative, the African elephant for gestation. The mammoth embryo will then be placed inside the womb of the elephant in hopes that a healthy mammoth calf will be born. Simple!

The problem is, it’s not at all simple… and even if they can successfully do the above, cloning (as we all know from South Park) is slippery slopes.

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Skyrim has mammoths, so will we again… maybe