Actually, with an extremely concentrated effort, I have little doubt that we could clone it. The technology is young, but it’s there. The problem is that cloning an entire genome by our present methods (plasmids) is unwieldy. We can clone short fragments easily. That’s how we replicate single genes. We can clone longer fragments fairly well too. But unfortunately, we can’t just insert a whole mammalian genome onto an E. coli plasmid.
It is theoretically possible at this point, if, say, there were a massively concentrated scientific effort, to map the genome and to then reconstruct it piecemeal. And inserting it into a living cell is really no problem. That happens all the time.
Which is not to say that it will happen, yet. But it WILL happen, and I don’t think it’s really that far off.
Oh, they’re still huge. But if we can map the genome, it’s POSSIBLE (but not practical yet, without a massive Department of Defense-style funding source) to clone it. It’s mostly a matter of refining the process at this point.
I get it now. Sorry, I just couldn’t parse it at first - I read it as if you were saying were closer to Asian Elephants than Asian Elephants were to Asian Elephants, and African ones.
I could’ve sworn that someone was talking about retro-breeding mammoths from existing elephants (without trying to clone, or use frozen sperm), but I can’t find anything about it.