Mammoth monument in Salekhard city, Tumen region, RussiaWIKIMEDIA, ZMIKERussian researchers reported last week that they’d discovered a very well preserved mammoth carcass lying under ice and tundra in the Lyakhovsky Islands north of the Arctic Circle. Word of the find, and the fact that flowing blood was recovered from the beast, spread around the popular press like wildfire. “The fragments of muscle tissues, which we’ve found out of the body, have a natural red color of fresh meat,” said expedition leader Semyon Grigoriev in a statement from North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yaktusk, Siberia. “The blood is very dark, it was found in ice cavities bellow the belly, and when we broke these cavities with a poll pick, the blood came running out.”
Grigoriev noted that the discovery could be just the spark needed for a joint mammoth cloning project between NEFU and the South Korean Sooam Biotech Research Foundation. “It was important to discover the mammoth in cold weather, because the unique discovery would melt in summer or autumn, and the priceless material for joint project ‘Mammoth rebirth’ of NEFU and Sooam foundation could disappear from thawing and wild animals,” he said.
But is the hope of finding viable DNA and possibly even intact cells in the mammoth really that high? Scientific American reached out to some mammoth experts who weren’t involved in the latest discovery, which was announced in the press before publication in the scientific literature, to temper the enthusiasm. “[The Russian team has] not ...
