NOW WE'RE TALKING! WOOLY MAMMOTHS TO RETURN!

Hot on the heels of the revelation that modern humans carry caveman DNA, scientists want to take the next logical step and take the DNA from tissue specimens of wooly mammoths to bring them back out of extinction. By modifying successive generations of a female elephant's eggs until the DNA matches the mammoths, an actual mammoth could be brought to term and born into this world for the first time in about 10,000 years. Scientists have ample material to work with since perfectly preserved frozen mammoths are not all that uncommon, and their DNA is in pristine condition.

What does this mean to the rest of the world? Not all that much in the great scheme of things, but the caveman DNA inside of us rejoices at the prospect of great herds of our most challenging prey once again roaming the frozen steppes of Russia, the Alaskan wilderness and northern Canada, about the only places with climates suitable to these Ice Age beasts. There were many subspecies of mammoth, many of them a lot larger than today's elephants and covered with long, greasy hair to insulate them from the cold and sporting curved tusks that could reach 10 feet in length.

These magnificent animals roamed the earth for over a million years and were considered dinner for enterprising cavemen willing to risk being trampled by 12 tons of angry pachyderm or being turned into caveman-kebab by getting skewered by those huge tusks. Since they were gigantic and travelled in herds, their natural enemies were also huge; saber tooth tigers, dire wolves and short-faced bears, all of these predators a lot bigger and fiercer than even their largest modern counterparts.

Of course bringing all these terrifying predators back to life could pose some pretty significant risks to people. But then again, scientists have not traditionally spent an excessive amount of time worrying about the effects of their work on the rest of us. Nuclear weapons and poison gas spring readily to mind. Love Canal, Chernobyl, Agent Orange and asbestos also place high on that list. Generally, when scientists can do something, they just do it and damn the consequences. So be on the lookout for mammoths, packs of dire wolves, Volkswagon-sized bears and prides of saber toothed tigers the size of mules any year now.

And science further informs us that these were all very adaptable creatures and won't necessarily stick to the frozen northern wastes, especially once they figure out that the further south they go, the more food there is to eat, with no stubborn tundra to break through to find plants for the Mammoths, and a lot of docile livestock for the predators. Not exactly good news for Iowa corn farmers and beef ranchers, and maybe a little disconcerting for townsfolk when the newly minted predators discover that humans are a lot easier to kill than mammoths. And you think the park rangers at Yellowstone have a tough time controlling the grizzly bears? Tourism there will become sort of like Russian roulette, seeing how many family members manage to get back in the Winnebago at the end of the day. Billy? Where's Billy?

So maybe the real significance of this news is that the world is not really in such dire financial straits as the news media would have us believe when you have bunches of scientists engaged in completely frivolous projects like resurrecting extinct prehistoric creatures. There seems to be plenty of money in the research and development budgets of industries that have provided mankind with such indispensable amenities as lemon scented toilet paper and garbage bags, chewable aspirin and cars the size of light tanks to drop off the dry cleaning and get little Susie safely to her aroma therapy appointment.

So let these DNA science dweebs dream of woolly mammoths roaming the earth again, or even barn-size dinosaurs while they're at it. They've proven themselves fairly useless when it comes to figuring out solutions to the real tricky problems around here, like curing cancer, diabetes, AIDs, dengue fever and even malaria, which still takes an impressive toll of human beings all over the world every year, or the problem of mass starvation which claims 36,000 victims every single day. Are they planning to feed the hungry mammoth steaks? Just one of those bad boys could feed an entire village for a month.

Or just maybe they're thinking that bringing back giant land mammals and dinosaurs will replenish the fossil fuels we're burning at an ever-increasing rate? Yeah, that ought to do it, repopulate the world with giant creatures, then kill them and let them rot and in a few million years we'll have plenty more oil to burn. It worked once, right? Only this time we'll control where they rot so that the oil is sitting underneath more reasonable countries, like our own! Diabolically clever, no? Perhaps there's a method to their madness. Or not.