Will a herd of wholly mammoths again be heard pounding the grassy steppes of Siberia?

The possibility exists – if a living mammoth cell can be found, and the extinct animal can be cloned from that living cell.

In the paper last week, it was reported that a wooly mammoth carcass had been found on the Lyakhovsky Islands off the north coast of Siberia. This is not new news. Folks up there have been digging up mammoths for years. So, what’s the big deal with this latest find?

Blood

This mammoth had been flash frozen in pure ice. And, in the icy cavities beneath the prehistoric tusked creature, pools of dark red blood were spied. When the scientists broke through the ice, the blood came running out. Samples were collected, packed with preservatives and sent to Yakutsk, Russian for evaluation. If there are living blood cells in those samples, the possibility of a successfully cloned de-extinct young mammoth just went up remarkably.

The reason the scientists are so excited is that the blood of mammoths is thought not to freeze in extreme temperatures. In part, scientists believe this is what kept those behemoths of old trudging through the frozen landscapes of Siberia 10,000 years and more ago. Mammoth blood is apparently a type of antifreeze that kept the big animals warm – along, of course, with a healthy dose of fat and a very serious wooly overcoat. The temperature at the site where the blood was found was about 17 degrees Fahrenheit (-8 degrees Celsius). And still the blood flowed. Ladies and gentlemen, we may have a living mammoth cell.

If that cell is alive, here is how the cloning may work. Scientist will coax the cell to re-produce into more cells, hopefully many more individual cells – say a couple of million cells for starters. Cloning is not a sure thing — so, the more raw material to start, the better the chances of success. Next, those smart guys in the back room will try to re-program some of those cells, that are so quickly dividing, to grow together into an embryo, that is, a little baby mammoth. (This has to be very tricky step, but the science of cloning has advanced, and a living embryo is apparently a very doable thing – if you can get a bunch of living cells to start.) Then, that little baby mammoth embryo will be implanted into a surrogate elephant mother’s womb. (Elephants are the closest living relatives to mammoths.) If all this can be accomplished (and you can see there are a great many “if’s”), the next step is PATIENCE. The normal gestation period for an elephant is about two years. So, get ready to wait, and wait, and wait. And, when the phone rings in the middle of night two years from now, jump into the car and rush to the elephant hospital and wait, and wait, and wait some more. . . .

What’s that noise?

It sounds like a loud rumbling, like a stomach growling.

A baby elephant is called a calf. A calf may stand three feet (one meter) tall and is usually quite hairy with a long tail and a very short trunk.

The stomach of a baby elephant calf will make loud rumbling and growling noises that other elephants can hear. To Mom, this is a contented sound saying, “Everything is okay, and where’s the food?”

At that moment, the delivery room door crashes open and the baby elephant doctor rushes out, pulls his mask aside and shouts, “It’s a boy!” He pauses and adds, “A very hairy, wooly, healthy mammoth calf!”

Now, that’s a story I want to read. It may well be better than Ian Fleming and 007. For fun, the cloning experts may want to borrow one from the James Bond titles. If I may suggest, those very happy grumblings sound to me like “From Russia With Love.” How about to you?

I hope someone brought a lot of baby food,

Grandpa Jim