Experts on Friday sketched hopes of resurrecting a species that became extinct 10,000 years ago after they exhumed an intact body of a woolly mammoth from the northern Siberian permafrost.
Cloning of the mammoth could be attempted if DNA can be retrieved from the carcass, which was recovered last Sunday and has been kept safely in freezing cold ever since to prevent composition, they suggested.
Bernard Buigues, whose team Polar Circle Expeditions extracted the beast, described how bold Russian pilots raced against time and scant fuel resources to fly the mammoth, enclosed in its original icy coffin, to the town of Khatanga, 250 kilometers (150 miles) from the site.
Dick Moll, a Dutch researcher and member of the team, told the press conference the discovery was "a dream come true." With the excitement of an Egyptologist entering a pharoah's tomb, Moll recounted what it was like to see, touch and smell the body of an animal that otherwise has existed only in drawings, fossils or rotted remnants.
The top layer of icy soil covering a part of the mammoth was gently warmed up using a hair dryer, exposing thick tendrils of hair at least a meter (3.25 feet) long. Moll said he felt the hair gradually warm in his hand, suddenly giving him the sensation that he was touching a live beast. A pervasive, unforgettable smell of elephants filled the chilly chamber.
The giant tusks of the mammoth stuck out the tundra, drawing to the attention of the world. It has been named Zharkov, after Guenady Zharkov, a local man who found him.
The crown of the animal's head, which was exposed to the elements, is missing, as well as its brain, but the beast is otherwise intact -- a unique discovery. Thanks to carbon-dating the animal's hair and bones, the team believes it died 20,380 years ago, give or take a hundred years. It died at around 47 years of age.
The mammoth will be installed in a laboratory dug in the permafrost at the base of a cliff at Khatanga. The big question, Moll said, was whether the animal can be cloned -- reviving a species that has been extinct for 10 millennia. He believed that with the right technology and DNA material, cloning was possible. "This might take 10 or 20 years, maybe longer. What we need to find is to find DNA, in parts of the marrow, in big bones like the femur, or in the soft organs," he said. "The remains are in an excellent state of preservation."
It will take months of painstaking preparation, gently defrosting the body with hairdryers while at the same time keeping it chilled, to find out whether this is the case, Buigues cautioned. "I am sure that we will find things that we did not expect," he said. "We may find an explanation for the disappearance of the mammoth. Hopefully, this study will also bring us closer to the culture and lifestyle of our recent ancestors." Another possiblity -- also theoretical -- would be to recover sperm from the animal's testes and to artificially inseminate an elephant.
There is also the risk that Zharkov's surprises may not be all pleasant. The team is taking precautions against the risk that entombed in the carcass are viruses and parasites that have lain dormant for thousands of years and could replicate when exposed to a warmer environment.
The laboratory will have to be hermetically sealed, and researchers will wear full protective suits and take showers after touching the body, Buigues said.
Zharkov could be the start of something big. Buigues said he had tips from local fishermen and hunters that there were other preserved remains in the region, and added he knew of "two other sites where there is probably something more than bones."
Prehistoric horses, wolverines, deer and rhinoceroses may be buried, and if they can be found -- and funding becomes available -- they could join Zharkov in a touted "Museum of the Cold" at Khatanga, he said. But he admitted that he had yet to agree with the Russians on ownership if DNA is found and is commercially exploited.
However, it must be acknowledged that the thrust of research around this discovery was pre-determined by the scientific community, which overwhelmingly comprises of secularist thinkers. The scientific community is interested in the development of cloning in the name of humanitarianism as it ostensibly bases its claims on the potentially good side of cloning.
People who discover the remains of the past are supposed to understand, learn from it and appreciate God's wisdom, but not make a vain attempt to replicate the past. Much of today's scientific community is very distant from the epicenter of their spiritual and natural selves that God created us in. It is for that reason that it attempts to go back in the past and recreate it materially. "Creation" of such animals of the past may become possible but it is hardly necessary. There is a reason why those animals became extinct, and we should all reflect on that fact before any of us makes any hasty decisions in genetically re-engineering the cells of this animal into another ore artificially inseminating the sperm of this mammoth into an elephant. Even if successfully carried out, how is artificial insemination of this mammoth with an elephant going to produce better elephants? God created the elephants in the manner that they exist in today, and altering that nature would only be the feeble effort of scientists to play the part of God.
We should take the world as it has been given to us by God and not try to go beyond what the wisdom dictates. The scientists must not lose sight of this.
