The Science of Resurrection of Species. How to Clone a Mammoth

We dream of living forever. We hope that we can clone our beloved pets, just like it happened with Dolly the sheep. We want to stroll through the "Jurassic Park," see dinosaurs and mammoths, and witness extinct moa, dodos, and... other creatures. Beth Shapiro - a professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Santa Cruz in California - tells us an exciting story of modern science in recreating species. Once any organism dies, its DNA immediately begins to break down under the influence of ultraviolet light and bacteria, so you can’t just take a cell and clone an extinct animal. Researchers face a challenging task - they are trying to piece together a puzzle where some pieces of DNA are missing. Let's figure out whether we need to revive extinct species (Beth Shapiro is confident that it is worthwhile), what difficulties await us on this path, and what this might lead to.