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WHO WANTS A WOOLY MAMMOTH?!

With the long strides in medical and scientific research and discoveries that are happening more and more often it looks like we have a whole lot of really cool and, once thought impossible, things coming our way.

One of recent interest and, one I find absolutely fascinating, is the ability to clone animals, which has been proven possible many times over but, what about the animals that lived on earth thousands of years ago?

Seems like we’re in luck.

CBS News writes:

(Livescience.com)  Woolly mammoths — shaggy, long-extinct relatives of modern elephants — could be easier to clone than one might think, researchers say.

Still, even if any such efforts succeed, they might take decades to accomplish, not the five years in which scientists from Russia and Japan reportedly have said they can achieve it.

Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) wandered the planet for more than a million years, ranging from Europe to Asia to North America. Nearly all of these giants vanished from Siberia by about 10,000 years ago, although dwarf mammoths survived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until 3,700 years ago.

Scientists regularly conduct research on the DNA of these shaggy giants, extracting it from tusks, bone and teeth. With all this genetic material on hand, there lies the distinct possibility mammoths might be cloned one day.

Although some sources say the cloning of a wooly mammoth will happen soon, possibly within 5 years,others, such as CBS News, think it may take just a bit longer than that.

What I do know is that, if they can clone a mammoth, they can probably make a tiny version of one as well, right? Now, just try and convince me that a Mini-Mammoth would not be the greatest pet ever.

Read more at cbsnews.com