Bringing back the ancient world

We're not going to see Jurassic Park in our lifetimes: recovering adequate dinosaur DNA and putting it to use is, according to all but a few scientists, hopeless, even if Michael Crichton made it as realistic as possible.  But what of animals we have tissue samples from - like the woolly mammoth? One maverick thinker in Russia, Sergey Zimov, argues we should bring back the mammoth as part of creating a new ecosystem in a warming Siberia - or, rather, recreating one that existed - to reduce "insulation" for the ground by converting from forest to grassland, reflecting more light in the summer and extending the reach of winter's cold to slow the thawing of the permafrost.  Crazy? Seemingly. Impossible? Apparently not.

THANKS TO: Kris Winkler for pointing this one out to me.