Caption: "Woolly mammoths were driven to extinction by probably by a combination of climate change and human impacts. The image depicts a late Pleistocene landscape (maybe 125,000 to 12,000 before present) in northern Spain with woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), equids, a woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), and European cave lions (Panthera leo spelaea) with a reindeer carcass." (Slightly edited.)
This is a scene from the Paleolithic Era of human existence perhaps from when modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe.
Some folks hope to clone woolly mammoths from surviving DNA (see, e.g., Wikipedia: Woolly Mammoth: Recreating the species, Will we ever clone a mammoth? Ed Young).
It's a longshot---but:
-
"They're cloners---good
ones."---Attack
of the Clones (2002).
The cloners probably would have to use an elephant ovum and surrogate mother.
Other folks say resurrecting the mammoth is complete nonsense---probably impossible, waste of resources, unethical to recreate beings whose ecosystem is extinct---but admitting their inner boy/girl yearns to see a mammoth stalking over the tundra.
Credit/Permission: ©
Public Library of Science,
artist:
Mauricio Anton (1961--) ,
before or circa 2004
(uploaded to Wikipedia by
User:Bender235,
2008) /
Creative Commons
CC BY-SA 2.5.
Image link: Wikipedia:
File:Ice age fauna of northern Spain - Mauricio Anton.jpg.
Local file: local link: pleistocene_mammoth.html.
File: Art_p file:
pleistocene_mammoth.html.
