Michael Crichton is no longer with us but his science fiction remains and it's more prescient than ever. Remember a little thing he wrote called Jurassic Park? Well, thanks to a new development in cloning, a planned Pleistocene Park (future home to revived extinct animals like the mammoth, woolly rhinoceroses, and even saber-toothed cats) is one step closer to reality.

Japanese scientists successfully cloned a mouse from one that had been frozen at minus 20 degrees Celsius for sixteen years. The team, led by Teruhiko Wakayama, published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 4 and say the discovery increases the possibility that extinct animals, such as mammoths could, perhaps, be resurrected. 

The method they used goes beyond what was done to create the first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep. Nuclei from brain cells of the frozen animals were collected and injected into empty eggs whose own DNA had been removed, to generate cloned embryos. Then there was a second round of cloning that used the stem cells taken from the embryos.

Don't buy your plane ticket just yet -- there are still obstacles to overcome. First, scientists would have to find a frozen sample. Akira Iritani, a member of the Mammoth Creation Project is optimistic about that creature's chances because, "It's said that there are more than 10,000 mammoths lying underneath Siberia." But even if they find a sample, corpses frozen in permafrost for several thousand years are likely to have damaged cells and DNA. And splicing in DNA from a similar animal (a frog's DNA is used to fix the dino's damaged DNA in Crichton's book) would create a new hybrid creature -- not the animal intended. Furthermore, even if the DNA was fine, there's the problem of finding surrogate egg donors and mothers to use in the cloning process. Will an African elephant someday be the mother of a mammoth? With a little luck and a little more progress, it could happen.

Jurassic Park took place off the coast of Costa Rica. This fantasyland is planned for northern Siberia, but that's about the only major difference. There might not be mosquitoes involved in this cloning process but don't forget the big picture -- Crichton never did: These animals aren't dinosaurs but they're still dangerous. Perhaps scientists didn't read through to the end of the book... Let's hope they don't make the same mistakes made by John Hammond.