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Julian Ryall

Japanese scientists seeking  to clone a woolly mammoth to stock  a 'pleistocene park'  claim the upcoming World Expo has put their scientific research back by years.

Kazufumi Goto,  a reproductive physiologist,  believes that  frozen sperm or even soft tissue   taken from a woolly mammoth trapped in  the Russian permafrost will allow him to regenerate the creature.

But organisers of next year's World Expo in Japan have beaten him and other scientists to the mammoth. They have already begun excavating what they hope will be a complete specimen that can be used as an event attraction.

Dr Goto claims that by taking the best specimen available, the expo team has put back by at least three years his dream of herds of mammoths roaming the Siberian steppes.

'We don't know exactly what the Aichi 2005 World Exposition organisers are doing or how because there has been no communication between us, but the mammoth that they are planning to put on display there next year is for entertainment, not for science,' said Dr  Goto, who heads the privately funded Mammoth Creation Project.

'They are damaging all the hard work that other people have put into this project.'

On June 8, a 30-strong team of scientists hired by the expo organisers flew by helicopter to a stretch of river bank, about 30km south of Yukagir, a village in far northeast Siberia, where locals had found a frozen mammoth.

The head of the beast protruded through the surface, with the rest of its massive body covered by 4 metres of snow and ice. Hair was still attached to the carcass, and its last meal was still in the intestines.

The team is returning to the site next month to resume digging. They hope to have the mammoth ready in time for the expo, which opens in Aichi prefecture, in central Japan, in March.

'The theme of the expo is nature's wisdom, and the mammoth is regarded as being symbolic of life on Earth 10,000 years ago,' said expo spokeswoman Ayumi Okamoto.

'We aim to show that we are learning from nature's wisdom and that in the 21st century, we can coexist with the Earth.'

She denied that money had been paid directly to officials in Siberia for rights to the dig. Neither could she give precise figures for how much money has been given over to the project.

'I cannot say the total budget, although it is a few hundred million yen,' she said. Two hundred million yen is equal to about HK$15 million.

Dr Goto, 53, is dismissive of the mammoth being turned into an attraction rather than an opportunity to learn.

'We have to be very careful in analysing the information that is gathered in Siberia,' he said. 'My team is very disappointed that this is all being done for the sake of exhibiting the mammoth. They're paying a lot of money just to get some bones; it's bad for Japan, the expo and science.'

Veteran mammoth hunter Akira Iritani,  an ex-colleague of Dr Goto, agrees. He too is hunting for the perfect specimen to begin cloning experiments, but his plans have been thrown into disarray by the expo.

'We have no plans to go back to Siberia this year,' said Professor  Iritani, who does research at Kinki University's school of biology-oriented science and technology in central Japan. 'We have not been able to identify the locations of any good samples, and that's because the Aichi Expo organisers are spending such large amounts of money there to get the full body of a frozen mammoth.

'I think it will be very difficult for them to recover a complete body, no matter how much money they give - and I've heard it's several hundreds of million of yen - it will still be very hard.'

Professor Iritani and Dr Goto are competing in the search for well-preserved mammoth DNA, the first step in realising a pleistocene park. After cross-breeding the DNA with the creatures' modern-day counterparts - the elephant - they hope to create a vast 'safari park' in northern Siberia.

The park would be a joint venture with Russia, allowing visitors to witness a scene not seen in thousands of years - towering mammoths and, using the same cloning technique, eventually woolly rhinoceroses and even sabre-tooth tigers.

'The first aim is to reproduce a mammoth; after that we can decide what we're going to do with them. The research is the most important part of this project,' said Hiromi Kato, who works with Professor Iritani.

However, Professor Iritani and Dr Goto may find themselves trailing the expo team yet again. The event's organisers are refusing to say what will happen to the mammoth specimen - should they be successful in retrieving one - once the expo is over.

In keeping quiet, the organisers have raised fears that they will begin their own cloning project and set up a pleistocene park in Japan.



Cloners race expo for the perfect woolly mammoth