Is it possible to clone mammoths

And in that case we have very healthy pigs that are breeding and donating organs for preclinical trials at Massachusetts General Hospital," he said. This animal survived 24, years frozen in the Siberian permafrost. The research team has analyzed the genomes of 23 living elephant species and extinct mammoths, Church said.

The scientists believe they will need to simultaneously program "upward of 50 changes" to the genetic code of the Asian elephant to give it the traits necessary to survive and thrive in the Arctic. These traits, Church said, include a centimeter layer of insulating fat, five different kinds of shaggy hair including some that is up to a meter long, and smaller ears that will help the hybrid tolerate the cold.

The team also plans to try to engineer the animal to not have any tusks so they won't be a target for ivory poachers. Once a cell with these and other traits has successfully been programmed, Church plans to use an artificial womb to make the step from embryo to baby -- something that takes 22 months for living elephants. However, this technology is far from nailed down, and Church said they hadn't ruled out using live elephants as surrogates.

We've got a lot of experience with that, I think, making the artificial wombs is not guaranteed. It's one of the few things that is not pure engineering, there's maybe a tiny bit of science in there as well, which always increases uncertainty and delivery time," he said. First of all, you're not going to get a mammoth.

It's a hairy elephant with some fat deposits. We know a little, bit but we certainly don't know anywhere near enough. However, scientists have often debated on the pros and cons of such genetically designed animals which are thought to be a way to save endangered species. Critics have always maintained that the procedure is very expensive and complicated, not to mention scientists say that often these animals have some sort of clinical problem.

Now a team at Harvard University are working on bringing back the woolly mammoth. So is that really possible? In order to do so, scientists need to be able to secure well-preserved remains of such animals in order to be able to revive a healthy set of mammoths. But it is near impossible to do so. So what is the way around this? What the scientists are trying to do with this particular project is develop a new cross-species animal between the mammoth and the Asian elephant, which is their closest relative.

But Asian elephants and mammoths are thought to differ by at least genes, and figuring out exactly which ones are different will take a while. And then that single cell still needs to develop into an embryo and then a baby mammoth. We may be able to make progressively more mammoth-like elephant hybrids, but it will be a slow process. Luis trained as a zoologist, but now works as a science and technology educator.