Sir John Gurdon, the British scientist who won this year’s Nobel prize for medicine, says that the progression to human cloning could happen within the next 50 years. It is also Gurdon’s work involving the cloning frogs in the 1950’s and 60’s that led to the later creation of Dolly the sheep by Edinburgh scientists in 1996.
A juvenile mammoth – nicknamed “Yuka” – was found entombed in Siberian ice near the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and shows signs of being cut open by ancient people. The frozen carcass is believed to be at least 10 000 years old – and could prove to be the first mammoth carcass revealing signs of human interaction in the region.
Scientists have thus far cloned sheep, mice, cats, horses and even a water buffalo, but now they want to clone a woolly mammoth. They also think they’ll be able to clone said mammoth within five years, all owing to a recovered thigh bone that has well-preserved bone marrow from permafrost soil in Siberia.