Do you think that there is any chance at all dinosauars could ever be cloned if not why.I saw on tv one day they might beable to clone the wolly mammoth
from jim, age 18, houston, tx, harris; July 23, 2001

TOM: Unfortunately, there are too many problems with trying to clone dinosaurs. Firstly, DNA begins to degrade very quickly, so that complete genomes are unlikely to survive for very long in any environment. It may be possible for DNA fragments to survive, but without the complete genome in the proper sequence you can't clone an animal. And, unlike Jurassic Park, you can't just fill in the gaps with the DNA of another animal, because sometimes just a little bit of difference in DNA has a very big difference in what animal is produced. (For example, human and chimp DNA differ only by 1.6%, and yet that 1.6% difference results in every detailed distinction between humans and chimps).

In the case of woolly mammoths: because the flesh is still preserved, it might be possible for find enough DNA fragments that overlap to produce a complete sequence. However, at present no one has cloned a mammoth: it would be interesting, though.