SCIENTISTS FROM HARVARD UNIVERSITY

have announced plans to create a live woolly mammoth in just two years. Wait, what? A woolly mammoth? The massive elephant-like creature with long fur and huge tusks, last seen roaming the frozen tundra in the Ice Age (both the time period and the movie)? Aren’t they extinct? Well yes, they are, but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. We’ve all heard of extinction – when a species of plant or animal dies out. Some extinct species are famous, like the dodo of Mauritius or the Tasmanian tiger (or thylacine, as it is properly called).

So “de-extinction”, as George Church of Harvard University explains it, is the process of bringing an extinct species back to life; and this is exactly what he intends to do with the mammoth.