Giant armadillos aren’t extinct.
I assume you meant Glyptodonts?
They continue an existing pregnancy that will produce a low functioning child. How many , do you suppose, set out from the beginning with the goal of having a low functioning child?
We wouldn’t be either. Neanderthals may well function very well.
I’m only half serious, by the way. I’m fascinated, though, and I think it’s likely that it will happen eventually no matter the law or ethical concerns, so I wonder what the most ethical way to do it would be.
Of course they would be people! By the time it happens, this will be seen as undeniable.
Look, even if you think that Neanderthals were/would be missing critical capacities for living in modern sapien society, we know they can take care of themselves just fine in the right context. We don’t know many things about them, but we do know that they can be far more capable than a “low-functioning” modern adult.
Not to minimize the potential problems, but we have a pretty good idea that we DID integrate them into our society in the past. We can’t be sure that they were treated better than slaves, but I think that unlikely since the concept of a slave belongs more to civilized societies than to primitive H/Gs. There are risk, yes, but there are risks that any person born might be a sociopath or serial killer. I would think the odds are very good that we’d be able to take care of him one way or another.
Here’s an idea for a SyFy movie: scientists clone a neanderthal and it turns out to be… a neanderthal, in the perjorative sense of the word. Narcissistically self-centered, violent, and sociopathically uncaring of the rights and feeling of others, or of social mores. An orc, more or less.
Personally, I’d vote for a dinosaur, and probably whatever one we think would be the most intelligent.
Perhaps a velociraptor. Nothing can go wrong if we only clone females. 
Not so. Trog was framed! I just watch that wretched, embarrassment of a “film” a few weeks ago. So bad in so many ways!
They took care of themselves as part of low-tech hunter/gatherer groups that existed in a low-tech world. Neither those groups nor that world still exist. If the clone lacks critical capacities to live in the 21st century, I guess he is scrod.
The woolly mammoth but mostly because I’m not familiar with the other animals. I feel such a creature would be an asset to the ecosystem.
However they might not truly be extinct. I’ve been reading how some elephants in Asia exhibit some features of mammoths and their might be some mammoth dna left in them which to me, so with careful breeding could bring the mammoth back.
We could take a baby from an Amazon tribe that has never seen modern human culture, or any technology beyond hunter-gatherer tech, raise it in a Manhattan skyscraper with wealthy NY parents, and we’d end up with a New Yorker. Probably a Giants and Yankees fan, with a NY accent, a social liberal and fiscal conservative, who loves pizza and hot dogs, and wants to go to NYU.
I think it’s likely that if we cloned a Neanderthal baby, raised it in a Manhattan skyscraper with wealthy parents, that we’d end up with a New Yorker who looks a bit different and is really brawny, but still loves pizza (as long as he/she takes their lactose pills) and hot dogs, roots for (and maybe plays for!) the Giants, is socially liberal, etc.
In other words, wherever a baby is raised will be totally normal to that individual. Raise a baby in a yurt in the Eurasian steppe, and steppe yurts will be normal to that individual, regardless of their DNA. Raise a baby in a tiny Tokyo mini-apartment, and that will be normal.
Hell, this even goes for non-humans… raise a pot-bellied pig in the suburbs, and suburbs will be normal for that pig. Raise a gorilla on a college campus, and college campuses will be normal to that gorilla, to the point that (and this is real, IIRC) the gorilla will happily put money in and get sodas from vending machines.
Neanderthals will be much, much closer to us than pigs and gorillas, so it seems ridiculous to me to think they would be so damn different that they couldn’t adapt to us (and we couldn’t adapt to them).
Whether s/he adapts or is “normal” or not, you have not escaped the ethical concern that you brought this person into the world as a science experiment. Not because you wanted a child. Not even because two people had the natural urge to place pee-pee in hoo-hoo. You brought this person into the world because you are curious about an extinct variety of humans. You have made this person a participant in your experiment without hir consent. You know who else did stuff like that?
Not as a “science experiment”, but just for curiosity’s sake. Which tons of people have done. Lots of babies are made for reasons of curiosity, and far worse reasons as well. And I wouldn’t force them or their parents to be a participant – if I were in charge, the mother would be free to cease her own (and her child’s) involvement at any time. All observation would be painless and voluntary, and the child would live their own life.
Another vote for Neanderthals, just so we can taunt them*, Gary Larson-style: “Nyah, nyah Neanderthals! Can’t make spear, can’t make fire! Nyah, nyah!”
Second choice would be the thylacine, which I guess is what is meant by ‘Tasmanian tiger’** even though it was more of a marsupial wolf.
*But from a safe distance, so they don’t bash our heads in with their clubs.
**Like calling a zebra an ‘African tiger’ just because it’s got stripes and so does a tiger. Sheesh.
Other children being born for bad reasons does not excuse you deliberately and pre-meditatedly bringing this one into the world just because you were curious about Neanderthals.
I haven’t accepted that curiosity is a bad reason. Assuming one fully intends to care for the child and provide for its needs, then I think it’s a good enough reason.
I’m guessing when you guys go to the zoo, you’re the ones who ask to see the domicile in which the Pan troglodytes reside.
Hopefully not too pedantic, but the Quagga species is not extinct, given it’s just a subspecies of the plains zebra. Also, while I’m tempted because it’s local, there’s actually an active reverse breeding program for it, which is quite successful, so it doesn’t need divine intervention anyway.
I see moa are there, but I’m going for the Haast’s Eagle instead. Because cool as moa would be, the giant raptor that ate moa would be cooler. We can feed them ostriches.
As I understand it, the people who discovered and settled Tasmania were not well-up on things zoological: finding a native predatory mammal with stripes, the first comparison-fodder they thought of was tigers, rather than wolves. Though I gather that there’s a doleful ballad, orginating from the first convicts sent to Tasmania, about their miseries there – including their being obliged to sleep out in the open, and thus make big fires
“For to keep the wolves and tigers off, upon Van Diemen’s Land”.
Equal-opportunity predator-repelling, here – notwithstanding the fact that the thylacine was no direct threat to humans: varying between timid, and happy to coexist peacefully.
I first became acquainted with the creature through books, some sixty years ago, as the “Tasmanian Wolf” – have always liked that appellation.