i’ve made a huge mistake
This is just awesome – we may not be all that far off being able to clone an actual wooly mammoth. 
Occasionally, despite our major effort to annihilate ourselves and the planet, humans do manage to do something which is really impressive. The usual chorus of “it’s impossible” is happening, but reading about the technology makes it sound like this is at least plausible.
Even more interestingly, it also seems possible that we might be able to clone a Neanderthal. The implications of that would be staggering – we would bring into existence another sentient, intelligent species. Apparently the “ethical” plan is to use a chimp as the mother and genetic launchpad, which produced this fairly hilarious quote from the scientist in question:
The big issue would be whether enough people felt that a chimp-Neanderthal hybrid would be acceptable, and that would be broadly discussed before anyone started to work on it.
Yeah, I would hope they’d broadly discuss whether a chimp/Neanderthal hybrid would be acceptable!! Doh!
I do quite like the idea of reconstructing extinct animals – Tassie tigers, dodos, etc.
I wonder what the poor bastard would make of what his rivals have done with the world.
I read up a bit about Neanderthals – apparently they had ceremonial burial (i.e. with medicinal herbs, artifacts etc) which implies a spiritual system of some kind and presumably language of some kind. They also had tools and tool-making tools, and were generally more advanced than their reputation suggests. It’s strange to think that while we spend our time searching for intelligent life “out there”, another sentient species actually existed on Earth (I’d love to hear a creationist explain that).