Could a Mammoth Be Cloned? Discovery Channel Explores the Possibility in Baby Mammoth, Premiering March 23 Programming Highlights / Discovery Channel Posted by RAD on Mar 17, 2008 - 09:55 AM Could a forensic investigation into the life and death of a newly discovered baby woolly mammoth literally take us “back to the future”? Baby Mammoth, a new one-hour Discovery Channel special, premiering Sun., March 23 at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. PT explores the explosive question: Could a mammoth be cloned? With today’s cutting-edge science, the reality of a living, breathing mammoth is looming closer than ever. Formerly skeptical paleobiologists now speculate that humans might even witness the “rebirth” of the mammoth in our lifetime. New high-tech advances in DNA technology mean that scientists are not only one giant step closer to penetrating the secrets of the mammoth’s world, but also to deciphering its very genetic code. In this Discovery Channel exclusive, Baby Mammoth travels to remote central Siberia to tell the story of one “survivor” from the Pleistocene era: a baby mammoth unearthed by Russian gold miners in Yakutian by accident in 2004. Through the course of the one-hour special, experts use models to physically “reconstruct” the baby in its entirety. And with cleverly rendered CGI, the team projects the baby mammoth into the 21st century to discover how and where this extinct animal might survive and whether an eventual Pleistocene Park is an idea whose time has finally come. The story unfolds as an international team of paleodetectives performs a thorough high-tech autopsy of the baby mammoth’s remains that begins in an “ice cave” laboratory in Yakutsk. Then the story picks up in Tokyo where some of the most sophisticated 3-D imaging of ancient animals is being performed today – including work on two of the 20th century’s important baby mammoths: Dima (the most completely preserved baby mammoth specimen found to date) and Mascha – and now this baby Oimyakon mammoth. In this lab, see how side-by-side CT-scans of the baby mammoth compares to its closest living relative, the modern baby elephant. In a new twist, the next generation of forensic detectives – molecular evolutionary geneticists – joins forces with the paleontologists not only in the laboratory, but also in the field. In the high Arctic where the woolly mammoth made its last stand, they’re on a quest for the purest ancient DNA. Isolating tiny snippets of DNA from extinct animals, they have literally been piecing together the mammoth genome – and the sequence might be complete within a year! Using the data gleaned from forensic studies of the baby mammoth both in the field and the laboratory along with the growing body of physical evidence (fossils, tusks, hair, etc.) from Siberian mammoth hunts past and present, this special tells the story of this iconic animal’s life and death. But more importantly, it frames the “big picture” of what may have caused the mass extinctions at the end of the Ice Age. This article is from CHANNEL CANADA   http://www.channelcanada.com/ The URL for this story is:   http://www.channelcanada.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2143