First they found the DNA. Now they're trying to do something with it.

Scientists for the first time have unraveled much of the genetic code of an extinct animal, the ice age's woolly mammoth, and with it they are thawing Jurassic Park dreams.

Their groundbreaking achievement has them contemplating a once unimaginable future when certain prehistoric species might one day be resurrected.

"It could be done. The question is, just because we might be able to do it one day, should we do it?" asked Stephan Schuster, the Penn State University biochemistry professor and co-author of the new research. "I would be surprised to see if it would take more than 10 or 20 years to do it."

No, seriously, this is way cool, and there are direct benefits today:

The more practical side of what this new research will do is point out better the evolutionary differences between mammoths and elephants and even humans and chimps, said [George Church, director of computational genomics at Harvard Medical School], who wasn't part of the study.

Elephants and mammoths -- comparable in size at about 8 to 14 feet tall -- diverged along evolutionary paths about 6 million years ago, about the same time humans and chimps did, Schuster said. But there are twice as many differences between the genetic makeup of chimps and humans as those between elephants and mammoths.

"Primates evolved twice as fast as elephants," Schuster said. But some animals such as rodents have had even more evolutionary changes, indicating that it might have to do with size or metabolism, said study co-author Webb Miller.

[...]

Miller and Schuster noticed that most of the mammoths they examined had far less genetic diversity than other species that are still alive and that may also give a clue into the biology of extinction.

So the duo are also applying what they learned from the cold Siberian behemoth to their other efforts to help save the endangered Tasmanian devil of Australia. They notice the same dramatic lack of genetic diversity in that modern day creature, Schuster said.