Incredible find ... scientist next to carcass of mammoth
THE carcass of a 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth had been found with blood still in its veins - boosting the chances of a Jurassic Park style clone of the beast.
The ancient beast was found in the Novosibirsk archipelago off the northern coast of Siberia.
When stunned researchers from the top Yakutsk University poked the remains with an ice pick incredibly, blood flowed out.
A deal has been signed to give South Korean scientists exclusive rights to clone the mammoth.
Blood ... researchers were stunned when blood flowed from ancient remains
Hwang Woo Suk, a stem cell scientist who created the world’s first cloned dog in 2005, said that once the tissues had been treated to a nuclear transfer process, eggs would be implanted into the womb of a live elephant for a 22-month pregnancy.
Semyon Grigoriev, chairman of the university's Museum of Mammoths and head of the expedition, said: "The fragments of muscle tissues, which we've found out of the body, have a natural red colour of fresh meat.
Expedition ... fragments of muscle tissue found
"The reason for such preservation is that the lower part of the body was underlying (sic) in pure ice, and the upper part was found in the middle of tundra.
"We found a trunk separately from the body, which is the worst-preserved part."
The temperature was ten degrees celsius below zero when the mammoth was found, so the discovery of liquid blood was a shock.
Clone ... scientists are excited about the possibility of recreating wolly mammoths
Grigoriev said: "It can be assumed that the blood of mammoths had some cryo-protective properties.
"The blood is very dark, it was found in ice cavities below the belly and when we broke these cavities with a pick, the blood came running out."
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