Word: mammothly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...scientific eyes of the world--and a few well-placed network cameras--watched, Russian scientists used a helicopter to extract a twenty-ton block of ice from the permafrost of Siberia. The block, believed to contain the fully intact remains of a 23,000 year-old woolly mammoth, was transported to Moscow where it now sits in a permanently frozen cave awaiting further scientific examination...
...that's not the end of the story. Banking on the probability that the giant mammoth popsicle would pique the interest of the international community--or at least divert some attention away from the vodka-loving President and the ongoing civil war in Chechnya--the Russian scientists in charge of the excavation decided to stage a bit of a show...
First, although the mammoth's head had been excavated in previous weeks, the scientists reattached the tusks to the block of ice before the helicopter transport. The result was something akin to Dumbo the flying ice cube--a press spectacle just awe-inspiring enough to make any avid watcher of the Discovery Channel...
Then came the Jurassic Park rumors. Larry Agenbrod, a Northern Arizona University mammal expert working on the excavation team, said he had been approached by U.S. cryogenics firms interested in cloning the mammoth by combining elephant DNA with DNA extracted from the mammoth remains...
Researchers hope that by studying the mammoth's genetic makeup they can discover why the species became extinct. But the real fun lies in the thought of watching a mammoth ? or a mammoth-cum-elephant ? rumbling over the plains. As for that possibility, scientists caution that the chance we?ll see one of these creatures in living, breathing form anytime soon remains remote. After all, there?s no certainty that after 23 millennia, the beast?s sperm will be potent, and in any case cloning is very rarely successful. The one sure bet is that Steven Spielberg has already reserved...