Because African and Asian elephants simply aren't good enough:
Scientists hoping to clone prehistoric woolly mammoths are preparing their first frozen DNA samples in a bid to revive the species.The specimens of bone marrow, muscle and skin were unearthed last August in the Siberian tundra where they had been preserved in ice for thousands of years.
Researchers at the Gifu Science and Technology Centre and Kinki University want to use the genetic material in the cells to clone a woolly mammoth, according to Akira Irytani, a scientist at Kinki University in western Japan.
Staunchly against the cloning of humans for any purpose, I believe that the genetic interpretation of our license to dominion over animals - up to creating bizarro mutants like spider-pigs, giraffe-seals and hyena-maples, of course - is as beneficial to our development as it is utterly fascinating.
Read the article. I'd love to see mammoths bounding about in wildlife refuges.
One little niggling discrepancy - isn't it a bit presumptious, given the particular lack of hard evidence, for the Independent to assume that mammoths were cleaned out not by obviously detrimental climate changes but homo sapiens overhunting?
Oh, wait; that's right. The Independent prefers enlightened opinion over fact for just about everything.