Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation -- who created the world’s first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005 -- will implant the nucleus from a mammoth cell into an elephant egg to create a mammoth embryo.
The embryo will then be implanted into an elephant’s womb. The Koreans say research could begin this year.
The woolly mammoth became mostly extinct about 11,000 years ago due to the rapidly changing environment and increasing human predation, according to the Canadian Museum of Nature. Some survived in Siberia, however, until about 3,700 years ago.
Before then, these massive hairy elephants roamed the northern tundra and cool steppe grasslands of Eurasia and North America, commonly feeding on tough dry grasses.
Specimens found in Yukon, Alaska and Siberia have allowed scientists to learn a great deal about the creature, which stood about three metres tall and had four-metre long tusks, the museum says.
33rd Square
