Woolly Mammoth Cloning May Be Completed Within Ten Years

Woolly mammoths and dinosaurs are very fascinating animals that extinct 4000 years and 65 million years ago respectively. These two animals attract interest of scientists as well as common people. Jurassic Park movie and book spreads widely the idea of bringing back the dinosaurs using cloning techniques. Woolly mammoth cloning will be more practical than cloning the dinosaurs. Because, we can use elephant as surrogate mother to give birth to cloned woolly mammoth. Average height and weight of woolly mammoths are 8.9 to 11.2 ft and 6 tonnes. They are similar to African bush elephants, Loxodonta Africana, in height (10.5 ft) and in weight (6 tonnes). The head of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, Aisen Nikolaev has announced that woolly mammoth cloning will be carried out within 10 years. 

(Woolly Mammoth - Wikipedia)

The Sakha Republic belongs to Russia as a federal subject. It has extreme climate with average temperature below -35°C (-31°F) during winter. Frozen bodies of cave lions, woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, bison and horses were found in this region. So, it is an important place for paleontology studies. In 2014, Nikolaev and his friends were proposed an interesting idea to build an Ice Age Park with mammoths.  It seems, Nikolaev is keen to bring back the woolly mammoth, cave lions and ancient horses using cloning techniques. Scientists from Russia, South Korea and Japan are working together to clone the woolly mammoth. 

A sheep named Dolly was the first mammal cloned successfully. It was cloned in 1996 by the scientists Sir Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell from Roslin Institute in Scotland. From then, several animals including monkey, horse, cat, pig and camel were cloned successfully. Due to ethical issues, human reproductive cloning is banned in many countries. Few countries, like UK and China, allow scientists to do therapeutic cloning. They can use human embryonic cells to do research on stem cells. 

See the below video about Dolly

If woolly mammoth cloning is successful, scientists may try to clone more extinct animals in the future.