Scientists trying to clone a 40,000-year-old horse as a "first step" to revive the extinct woolly mammoth

Scientists took samples of cells from an extinct baby horse, 40,000 years old, with the goal of reviving the species.

The Russian-South Korean team says that the male experience is a "first step" towards its ultimate goal: to revive the extinct woolly mammoth.

Laboratory images from Yakutsk – the coldest city in the world – show the search for "living cells" on the light frozen ginger carcass in permafrost between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago.

Close-up images highlight the extraordinary preservation of life in the natural freezer of the planet.

The foal was discovered in the frozen basement of a Siberian crater known as the "mouth of hell".

It was about 20 days when he died.

After washing tens of thousands of years of dirt, the mane and tail were black – with a dark band along the spine.

Dr. Semyon Grigoriev, a senior researcher at the Russian Mammoth Museum, said of the little horse: "Fortunately, the muscle tissue of the animal was undamaged and well preserved.

The cloning professor, Professor Hwang Woo Suk, came from Seoul to conduct research on live DNA material from the foal.

"If we can find a cell, we will do our best to clone the only animal," he said.

A mare of a kind of horse similar to the vanished breed of Lenskaya will be used as a substitute, he told the Siberian Times.

Similarly, when scientists are ready to clone a mammoth, an elephant will be used as a substitute.

But the professor said that there was much more similarity between the foal and a modern horse than between a mammoth and an elephant.

He said, "We have so many live horses. We can get a very good choice of eggs from these females.

"And having made the embryo cloned with this little horse, we can easily transport it to the surrogate.

"There are types of horses very close to the old one."

On the other hand, there is "a very big distance between the old mammoth and the elephant," he said.

There was "a million years of evolution between them".

With the foal, he added, "If we have a living cell, we can multiply it and get as many embryos as we need.

"In fact, if we get the living cell of the old fabrics, it will be unique in itself, because nobody has managed to do it before.

"And if we succeed in cloning the horse, it will be the first step to clone the mammoth.

"This will help us develop the technology."

Her researcher, Hae Hyun Kim – who pioneered a living cell from a dead pet dog frozen by its owner – turned to Yakutsk for a breakthrough.

The teacher said, "Miss Kim was able for the first time to remove the living cell from frozen tissue.

"It's very difficult because the water crystallizes in the cell and destroys it.

"But she has already managed to take a cell of frozen tissue.

"My team and Dr. Grigorev will collaborate and try to get living cells."