Russia is planning to develop a Jurassic Park style cloning facility

A university in Russia is planning to unveil a new 5.9 million USD Jurassic-park style cloning facility that aims to bring back extinct species like woolly mammoths, cave lions and other long-gone species back to life.

The new Jurassic Park style facility will be a 'world class paleo-genetic scientific hub' in the world's coldest city, Yakutsk.

Yakutsk is the capital of diamond-rich Sakha Republic, also known as Yakutia, where some 80 per cent of unique samples of Pleistocene and Holocene animals with preserved soft tissues have been found, thanks to permafrost.

The scheme of the centre is slated to be revealed at the fourth Eastern Economic Forum hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin from September 11-13 in Vladivostok.

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All about the facility

The centre will be based at Russia's Northern-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) which is seeking investment for the project.

According to experts, the centre will aim "to study extinct animals from living cells and to restore such creatures as the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave lion and breeds of long-gone horses"

The scientists are to use DNA found in woolly mammoths that have been preserved in ice in Siberia.
Image: MICHIL YAKOVLEV/NORTH-EASTERN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY

Russian scientists who are working closely with South Korean specialists plan to draw up laboratories which are sunk into the permafrost to work with samples from many different extinct species

About the study

Lead researcher, Dr Lena Grigorieva, who drafted plans for the centre, said, "There is no such unique material anywhere else in the world."

"We study not only Pleistocene animals -- another line is the study of the history of the settlement of the North-East of Russia," she said.

"Such studies will help in the study of rare genetic diseases, their diagnosis, and prevention."

Semyon Grigoryev (first from left) with Vladimir Putin and acting rector Evgenia Mikhailova (first from the right)
Image: NORTH-EASTERN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY

Future projects

Russian scientists and Harvard University geneticist Professor George Church might plan to inset woolly mammoth genes into an Asian elephant embryo by 2020.

Woolly mammoth.Image: Getty Images

If successful, it will create a mammoth-elephant hybrid and there are plans for the species to roam free in Siberia's Pleistocene Park, which is seeking to recreate the habitat of the far north of Yakutia.

Pyrenean ibex: The only animal to be cloned

Bringing back extinct species is no small feat because DNA degrades over time. Even if some of the soft tissue is preserved in permafrost, scientists will have to piece together odd fragments of DNA.

Only one animal, the Pyrenean ibex, has ever been cloned after going extinct after dying in 1997. The animal died after just seven minutes of life, meaning it was also the first animal to go extinct twice.

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Read: Dolly, the world's most famous sheep and first cloned mammal was born today

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