A researcher at Pennsylvania State University, Stephan Schuster, said in the journal Nature last week that he might be able to regenerate a mammoth from ancient DNA for just $10 million. Given that Chicago’s Field Museum, with the help of McDonald’s and Walt Disney, recently paid $8.36 million for an especially fine Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, Dr. Schuster should be able to sell a pack of live mammoths to zoo managers around the world. For making the past come alive, a mammoth is a good start, but it’s just a hairy elephant. What other extinct species would be good to have around again? Herein, a wish list. Because we are so interested in ourselves, the first two resurrected species might be the two close cousins whom our ancestors drove to extinction: THE NEANDERTHAL. This species and modern humans split apart some 500,000 years ago, and the Neanderthal adapted to the ice age climate that gripped its European homeland. Scientists in Germany are expected to report soon that they have decoded the full genome. No one knows if Neanderthals could speak. A living one would answer that question and many others. THE ‘HOBBIT.’ Remains of these downsized humans, […]