Turns out Michael Crichton had the right idea after all. He just had the wrong time frame.

As perhaps every scientist in the world has pointed out, DNA decays in considerably less than 65 million years, and you really can't substitute frog DNA for the missing stuff and still come up with T. Rex and all those other nifty dinosaurs. It simply can't be done.

So kiss the notion good-bye: there will never be a Jurassic Park.

But that doesn't mean there won't be a Pleistocene Park -- and sooner than you think.

Right. The Pleistocene era has two advantages over the Jurassic era. First, it comes 138 million years later. (Yes, T. Rex was around 65 million years ago, but the Jurassic wasn't. The final 73 million years of the dinosaurs' lifetime was the Cretaceous, but Cretaceous Park just doesn't roll off the tongue like Jurassic Park.)

Second, the Pleistocene has ice. Lots of ice. At one point, during the most recent Ice Age, ice covered a goodly portionof the Earth. In places -- quite possibly where you're sitting and reading this -- it was between half a mile and a mile thick.

What's important about that?

Well, some of that ice never melted. It's still with us.

And it's holding some nicely-refrigerated wooly mammoths.

I can hear you snorting now: "That crazy Jurassic Park stuff!" the way people who feared and distrusted science fiction used to snort "That crazy Buck Rogers stuff!"

Only it's not so crazy.

The Japanese mounted a pair of very expensive expeditions to Siberia to find a frozen mammoth. And when I say expensive, I'm not just talking about the cost of outfitting the crew and getting them there. An awful lot of Russian Mafia hands had to be crossed with gold and silver.

The expeditions were financed by Kagoshima University and led by Kazufumi Goto, a renowned genetic researcher. And despite the cost, and the fanatical dedication of his crew, he came away without a mammoth.

But the French found one.

Their expedition was led not by a researcher, but an explorer, Bernard Buigues, who knew the local people (there aren't a lot of them in northern Siberia, and they have very little use for strangers) and enlisted their help -- and lo and behold, after a few months the expedition actually came up with a fully-frozen (i.e., fresh) wooly mammoth. Even better -- we'll come to why in a moment -- it was a male.

Now, if that had been a movie, they would have thawed Jumbo out right then and there (and if it was an exceptionally bad movie, he'd have come to life and started ripping the clothes off the elderly scientist's beautiful daughter, who just happened to be along for the ride.)

But this wasn't a movie. They dug around the mammoth, then moved him, still encased in tons of ice, to a cave where the temperature was well below zero. Their next step -- the one they're working on right now -- is to widen the cave and turn it into a high-tech laboratory for mammoth experts from all over the world (including Kazufumi Goto, who inspired the expedition in the first place).

And then?

Well, they have two directions they can go.

One, they can clone the mammoth.

And who, I hear you ask, will carry the fetus?

An Indian elephant, who is genetically closer to the mammoth than any other animal.

Is such a thing feasible?

Absolutely.

I live in Cincinnati. Our local zoo has been doing some cutting-edge work in the transplanting of fetuses. We've had elands give birth to okapis, and cows give birth to kudus, and I guarantee you they are a lot less alike than Indian elephants and wooly mammoths.

The second direction is trickier, but not impossible: since the specimen they have is a male, they can try to artificially impregnate an Indian elephant.

Possible?

Well, yes, possible. I consider it a bit of a longshot, though the DNA experts say there's no reason why it shouldn't work. On the other hand, it's probably no more bizarre than breeding a horse to a Grevy's zebra, and I personally have seen several offspring of such matings.

But even if the breeding doesn't take, they'll still have a bank of frozen mammoth sperm, and if the next frozen mammoth happens to be of the female persuasion...well, it's simply a matter of introducing the sperm to the egg and finding a suitable host for the embryo, which would of course be an Indian elephant.

Will it happen with this particular frozen elephant? I hope so; he was a pain in the ass to find and extract. But if not, it'll happen with the second or the third, as our knowledge of cloning (and all other reproductive methodology) is increasing geometrically.

And there's something else to look forward to. Our Pleistocene Park won't be inhabited solely by mammoths and other animals that got caught in the ice.

There's another preserver of animals: tar. The animals we dig out of the tar pits won't look as good, but some of their DNA will be just as well protected. (Where? The nerves inside the teeth, for starters.)

So along with mammoths, a zoo-goer in your lifetime might drop by Pleistocene Park to see a saber-toothed tiger as well.

Like I said, Michael Crichton had the right idea. He just had the wrong park.