What was it that Jeff Goldblum’s character said in Jurassic Park? Something about just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should…?

Well, we seem to have an apropos situation on our hands in Russia, according to Associated Press.

I mean, on the one hand, it’s exciting to think that scientists believe they may be able to resurrect, say, a wooly mammoth, but what would we do with it/them? What would they eat and where would they get it? What modern species would loose its food source so these pre-historic creatures could live?

A.P reports that a team of Russian scientists resurrected an entire plant from material found in an Ice-Age squirrel’s burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. They say this “paves the way for the revival of other species.”

Yikes.

 “If we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue,” one of the scientists reportedly told the AP. “And this path could lead us all the way to mammoth.”

Japanese scientists are already searching in the same area for mammoth remains, A.P. reported, but the Russian scientist said he hopes his countrymen will be the first to find some regenerateable frozen animal tissue.

“It’s our land, we will try to get them first,” he said.

Swell.

Has anyone considered the ramifications of bringing back long-extinct creatures? Would we just make one and clone it over and over, one at a time, so people can see it in some display? That’s inhumane. Or will we make two and allow them to roam free, breading and expanding its population?

Where would they live? Would we set them is some reserve somewhere so wealthy people can pay to hunt them down like fish in a barrel?

I think there was probably a connection between the extinction of some of these huge monsters and the advancement of human kind to the top of the food chain.

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy the top spot on the food chain and am reluctant to abdicate it. The idea of having to compete for food with something the size of a wooly mammoth doesn’t appeal to me.

And what’s next – a saber-tooth tiger? Then we’ll have to watch our backs or become lunch. Also not such an appealing proposition.

Sometimes, maybe it’s better to just let sleeping mastodons lie.

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