Almost seems like they wished it did?! Why the Obsession? Bizarre..... "2nd Find 'confirms' End-Date of Mayan Calendar - 21 December 2012"

• Second inscription that confirms date of 'end' of Mayan calendar

• 'End date' marks end of 5,125-year-old cycle of time

• 1,300 year old carvings described as biggest hieroglyphic find in decades

• Inscription found on blocks abandoned by looters

Marcello A. Canuto, director of Tulane's Middle American Research Institute, examines hieroglyphics at the La Corona dig site in Guatemala

Archaeologists have found carvings in a stone staircase at the La Corona dig site in Guatemala which confirm the ‘end date’ of the Maya calendar, December 21, 2012.

It is only the second known inscription which confirms this 'end date'. 

New Age sects around the world have interpreted this as a potential doomsday event - with sales of blast shelters rising in the U.S. and believers taking refuge in a village in France.

The Mayan tablets are the subject of wild internet conspiracy theories, with predictions our world will be swallowed by a black hole, hit by an asteroid or devoured by ancient gods.

The 1,300-year-old inscription is described as one of the most significant hieroglyphic finds in decades.

Most of the inscription, carved into a stone abandoned by looters, deals with political history - but there is a reference to 'the end' in a passage about a king's return.

‘This was a time of great political turmoil in the Maya region and this king felt compelled to allude to a larger cycle of time that happens to end in 2012,’ says David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin, who led a dig at the site.

But many ethnic Mayans dismiss the apocalyptic predictions as largely a Western idea.

Rather than the end of time itself, the inscriptions refer to the start of a new era.

The 'apocalypse' refers to the end of a cycle of 5,125 years since the beginning of the Mayan Long Count calendar in 3113 B.C.

'The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth,' says Nasa, 'These fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012.'

‘This text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy,’ says Marcello A. Canuto, dco-director of the excavations at La Corona. 

A newly discovered Mayan tablet reveals the 'end date' for the Mayan Calendar - it's only the second artifact to specify the date

The carved blocks were found at the La Corona dig site in Guatemala

The hieroglyphics were found on blocks abandoned by looters at the La Corona dig site

Since 2008, Canuto and Tomás Barrientos of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala have directed excavations at La Corona, a site previously ravaged by looters. 

‘Last year, we realized that looters of a particular building had discarded some carved stones because they were too eroded to sell on the antiquities black market,’ said Barrientos, ‘so we knew they found something important, but we also thought they might have missed something.’ 

The find has been described as the most significant hieroglyphic discovery in decades

Marcello A. Canuto, director of Tulane's Middle American Research Institute, examines hieroglyphics at the La Corona dig site in Guatemala

DO THE MAYANS PREDICT DOOMSDAY IN 2012? THE CULTS AND THE REALITY

Inscriptions on Mayan tablets found in temples such as Tortuguero refer to 'the end' - and many internet conspiracy theories have predicted our world will be swallowed by a black hole, hit by an asteroid or devoured by ancient gods.

Cults have gathered in the tiny French village called Bugarach where they hope to survive the apocalypse.

Hundreds of books have been published on the subject since the Seventies, predicting Earth's demise at the hands of a mysterious planet Nibiru, or a black hole.

'The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth,' says Nasa, 'These fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012.'

But many ethnic Mayans dismiss the apocalyptic predictions as largely a Western idea.

Rather than the end of time itself, the inscriptions refer to the start of a new era.

The 'apocalypse' refers to the end of a cycle of 5,125 years since the beginning of the Mayan Long Count calendar in 3113 B.C.

What Canuto and Barrientos found was the longest text ever discovered in Guatemala. 

Carved on staircase steps, it records 200 years of La Corona history, states David Stuart, director of the Mesoamerica Center at The University of Texas at Austin, who was part of a 1997 expedition that first explored the site. 

Most of the inscription, carved into a stone abandoned by looters, deals with political history - but there is a reference to 'the end' in a passage about a king's return.

While deciphering these new finds in May, Stuart recognized the 2012 reference on a stairway block bearing 56 delicately carved hieroglyphs. 

It commemorated a royal visit to La Corona in AD 696 by the most powerful Maya ruler of that time, Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' of Calakmul, only a few months after his defeat by long-standing rival Tikal in AD 695. 

Thought by scholars to have been killed in this battle, this ruler was visiting allies and allaying their fears after his defeat. 

‘This was a time of great political turmoil in the Maya region and this king felt compelled to allude to a larger cycle of time that happens to end in 2012,’ says Stuart. 

So, rather than prophesy, the 2012 reference places this king's troubled reign and accomplishments into a larger cosmological framework. 

‘In times of crisis, the ancient Maya used their calendar to promote continuity and stability rather than predict apocalypse,’ says Canuto. 

Mayan temples in Guatemala: Researchers have found walls adorned with unique paintings - one depicting a line-up of men in black uniforms, and hundreds of scrawled numbers - many calculations relating to the Mayan calendar

Mayan carvings at La Corona: The 1,300-year-old inscription is described as one of the most significant hieroglyphic finds in decades

By ROB WAUGH

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2166375/Second-inscription-confirming-end-date-Mayan-calendar-2012-Guatemala.html#ixzz1zDLxV7wM

First Evidence of the Biblical King David..... Proof that David was 'No Myth'?

Finds 'strengthen the idea of the Bible as history'

Two small containers unearthed at Khirbet Qeiyafa are believed to be the first-ever archaeological evidence of Judean ritual dating from the time of David, about the 10th century B.C.E.

Archaeologists at a controversial site in the Elah Valley Tuesday announced a discovery that should further stir up the scholarly debate over the Bible's historical veracity.

Two small containers, one of clay and one of stone, unearthed at Khirbet Qeiyafa near Beit Shemesh, are believed to be the first-ever archaeological evidence of Judean ritual dating from the time of David, about the 10th century B.C.E.

	The artifacts discovered at Khirbet Qeiyafa.
	Photo by: Michal Fattal

Furthermore, the models resemble the description of Solomon's Temple in the biblical Book of Kings, say the head of the Hebrew University expedition to Tel Qeiyafa, Prof. Yossi Garfinkel, and his associate from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Sa'ar Ganor.

The ruin known as Khirbet Qeiyafa, on a rocky slope overlooking the Elah Valley in Israel's western lowlands, contains remnants of a walled city dating back 3,000 years. Originally the walls rose to a height of some six meters. Along the walls, which still stand three meters tall in some places, archaeologists have discovered the remains of 99 dwellings.

According to Garfinkel, Khirbet Qeiyafa is the first proof of the existence of a regional government during the time of David. This evidence is a significant counter-claim to scholars who say David's kingdom was nothing more than a meagerly populated village in the Jerusalem area. These scholars, known as minimalists, say that in the absence of extra-biblical support, Scripture's depiction of David's kingdom as large and powerful cannot be accepted.

The maximalists, however, who accept the validity of the biblical description, view Khirbet Qeiyafa as the first proof of their claim that David's realm could have been as large as the Bible says it was.

Garfinkel takes a middle position; to him, Khirbet Qeiyafa shows the existence of a regional realm that included Jerusalem, Hebron and the lowlands around Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Garfinkel told reporters that the boxes, 20 and 35 centimeters high, and which they believe contained symbols of a deity, are important because they are "identical to the object the Bible calls 'the ark of the Lord.'"

Containers of this type, which look like model shrines, are known to archaeologists from other sites, but Garfinkel says the Khirbet Qeiyafa finds are unique because they reveal motifs known from the biblical description of Solomon's Temple.

The clay container features a decorated opening flanked by lions and two pillars that Garfinkel says recall "Boaz and Yachin" - pillars that flanked Solomon's Temple, according to the Bible.

An aerial photo of the Khirbet Qeiyafa archaeological site in 2011.Sky View

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Garfinkel says a depiction of three straight beams appears on the clay container, above which are three circles as well as a design apparently representing the curtain that covered the entrance to the Holy of Holies.

Above that, three birds can be discerned on the roof, recalling the sacrifice of birds in the Temple.

According to Garfinkel, the stone container also recalls the Bible's description of Solomon's palace and the Temple: "And there were beams in three rows; and light was over against light in three ranks" (I Kings 7:4 ).

What was inside the boxes? Garfinkel and Ganor do not think there were figurines because no figurines have been discovered at the site.

Garfinkel says he thinks these models, which predate Solomon's Temple, show how depictions of a Solomonic-like shrine were present in the local architecture of the ancient East.

Dissenting opinion

However, Prof. Nadav Na'aman, a historian and archaeologist at Tel Aviv University, discounts Garfinkel and Ganor's conclusions. "These are beautiful finds but they are not special in that similar ones have been found in various places, and they should therefore not be connected in any way to the ark," nor to the Temple in Jerusalem, says Na'aman.

He says believers made models of shrines out of various materials as an act of devotion. "There was no such thing as making a model that represented a temple in another place."

He said he found the combination on one of the items of lions and doves very interesting. "The dove is connected to a fertility goddess, and this combination hints that the model belonged to a cultic site of a fertility goddess. I think Qeiyafa was a Canaanite site that had no connection to Jerusalem," he added.

In invoking Canaanites, Na'aman has touched on the heart of the scholarly debate. For Qeiyafa to play a role in disproving the claims of the minimalists about the meager nature of David's kingdom, Garfinkel has to show that it was neither a Canaanite nor Philistine site.

Garfinkel and Ganor say the shrine models they have found differ from those known so far and that their design underscores a Judean connection.

But Garfinkel says he does not need the shrines to prove that Qeiyafa was Judean - other discoveries at the site do it for him. For example, out of thousands of animal bones unearthed there, none were pig bones, and no figurines were found - two elements some see as alluding to biblical prohibitions. An inscribed potsherd was also found there whose writing some archaeologists identify as ancient Hebrew.

Na'aman has a different explanation for the lack of pig bones: "The Canaanites also did not eat pork. Only the Philistines ate a great deal of pork at this time." As for figurines, Na'aman says places elsewhere in Judea "were full of figurines."

Minimalists also discount the inscribed potsherd, saying it is impossible to differentiate its letters from other languages at that time.

Whether Judean or Canaanite, ammunition for the minimalists or the maximalists, one thing is certain about Khirbet Qeiyafa - the slated expansion of nearby Ramat Beit Shemesh would swallow it up, endangering what Ganor calls "a heritage site of the first order."

By Asaf Shtull-Trauring


http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/archaeological-find-stirs-debate-on-david-s-kingdom-1.429087?localLinksEnabled=false

Petrus Romanus and the Jerusalem Connection

 

The Vatican’s establishment of full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1993 has been credited as an overdue political consequence to the theological changes reflected in Nostra Aetate. However, in truth, there is much more going on than meets the eye. As early as April 15th, 1992, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger visited Israel and met exclusively with Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek. The Jerusalem mayor was quoted previously as saying, “The Israeli government should meet the Vatican’s demand to apply special status for Jerusalem.”[i] An Israeli journalist, Barry Chamish, has been working fearlessly for over two decades to expose a conspiracy which includes the current President of Israel, Shimon Peres, and his aid, Yossi Beilin. In his 2000 book, Save Israel, Chamish wrote:

In March 1994, the newspaper Shishi revealed a most remarkable secret of the Middle East “peace” process. A friend of Shimon Peres, the French intellectual Marek Halter, claimed in an interview that in May 1993, he delivered a letter from Peres to the pope. Within, Peres promised to internationalize Jerusalem, granting the UN political control of the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Vatican hegemony of the holy sites within. The UN would give the PLO a capital within its new territory and East Jerusalem would become a kind of free trade zone of world diplomacy.

Halter’s claim was backed by the Italian newspaper La Stampa, which added that Arafat was apprised of the agreement and it was included in the secret clauses of the Declaration of Principles signed in Washington in September 1993.[ii]

We took pains to fact-check Chamish’s claims, and to the extent that we were able, they checked out. Below is the original article which ran in the Italian paper La Stampa:

The headline reads “‘Now Jerusalem’ Secret Plan: to entrust it to the Pope”; the text below and to left of John Paul II’s photo reads, “The old town, under the auspices of the Vatican would be administered by the Palestinians Arafat told me: ‘I’m going to Jericho.’” The small print below that reads, “Mark Halter, French Israeli writer who, like other Jewish intellectuals played a mediating role in the difficult question, said here, the Pope would have the ‘spiritual sovereignty’ of the old town.” (translation Putnam)

It seems that the timing of the Vatican’s long overdue recognition of the state of Israel was motivated more by ambition than repentance. The major players on the Israeli side are the current President Shimon Peres (the Israeli representative at Oslo) and his aid, left-wing politician Yossi Beilin, a former Knesset member, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, and Justice Minister. The secret deal was allegedly meant to sweeten the pot as a clandestine portion of theOslo Accords. According to another Israeli journalist, Joel Bainerman, New World Order think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations was behind the deal all along and was encouraging a turnover of Jerusalem to the Vatican:

Pope Benedict XVI embraces Israel's President Shimon Peres

The plan was originally discussed in November 1992 (the same time the first meetings in London took place to discuss an agreement between Israel and the PLO which was probably arranged by Council on Foreign Relations executive, Edgar Bronfman) when then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met with Vatican officials in Rome. Under the plan, Jerusalem will stay the capital of Israel but the Old City will be administered by the Vatican. Arafat agreed not to oppose the plan. The plan also calls for Jerusalem to become the second Vatican of the world with all three major religions represented but under the authority of the Vatican. [iii] (emphasis added)

It seems the plan is underway. On February 4, 2012, an op-ed piece ran on the Israeli news site Ynet News titled, “Don’t Bow to the Vatican.” The editorial by Italian journalist Giulio Meotti opposes the Vatican’s designs on Jerusalem, and speaks in the past tensereferencing the sovereignty over the Cenacle (which houses the Hall of the Last Supper and King David’s tomb):

Don’t Bow to the Vatican

Israel reached an historical agreement with the Vatican to give up some sort of sovereignty over the “Hall of the Last Supper” on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Vatican will now have a foothold at the site: Israel agreed to give the Vatican first priority in leasing opportunities and access to it. [iv]

It appears that Rome’s Jerusalem ambitions are being implemented just in time for the arrival of Petrus Romanus.

Next week we will begin to examine how this potentially fits into biblical prophecy.

By Cris D. Putnam 

http://www.logosapologia.org/?p=3472 

Are Mysterious Fossils New Unknown Human Species?

A view of a skull from the Red Deer Cave People. Researchers found the species had unique features seen neither in modern nor known archaic lineages of humans. CREDIT: Darren Curnoe  View full size image

Mysterious fossils of what may be a previously unknown type of human have been uncovered in caves in China, ones that possess a highly unusual mix of bygone and modern human features, scientists reveal.

Surprisingly, the fossils are only between 11,500 and 14,500 years old. That means they would have shared the landscape with modern humans when China's earliest farmers were first appearing.

"These new fossils might be of a previously unknown species, one that survived until the very end of the ice age around 11,000 years ago," said researcher Darren Curnoe, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

"Alternatively, they might represent a very early and previously unknown migration of modern humans out of Africa, a population who may not have contributed genetically to living people," Curnoe added.

The skeletons

At least three fossil specimens were uncovered in 1989 by miners quarrying limestone at Maludong or Red Deer Cave near the city of Mengzi in southwest China. They remained unstudied until 2008. The scientists are calling them the "Red Deer Cave People," because they cooked extinct red deer in their namesake cave. [Photos of the Red Deer Cave People]

The fossil specimens of the possibly new human species were uncovered in 1989 by miners quarrying limestone at Maludong or Red Deer Cave near the city of Mengzi in southwest China. They remained unstudied until 2008. Shown here, Darren Curnoe (right) and Andy Herries (left) excavating at Maludong in 2008.
CREDIT: Darren Curnoe

View full size image

"They clearly had a taste for venison, with evidence they cooked these large deer in the cave," Curnoe said.

Carbon dating, a technique that estimates the radioactive decay of carbon in samples of charcoal found with the fossils helped establish their age. The charcoal also showed they knew how to use fire. Stone artifacts found at the Maludong site also suggest they were toolmakers.

A Chinese geologist found a fourth partial skeleton, which looks very similar to the Maludong fossils, in a cave near the village of Longlin in southwest China in 1979 while prospecting the area for oil. It stayed encased in a block of rock neglected in the basement of an archaeological research institute until 2009, when the international team of scientists rediscovered the fossils.

"In 2009, when I was in China working with co-author Professor Ji Xueping, he showed me the block of rock that contained the skull," Curnoe recalled. "After picking my own jaw up from the floor, we decided we had to make the remains a priority of our research."

Jutting jaws and flaring cheeks

The Stone Age fossils are unusual mosaics of modern and archaic human anatomical features, as well as previously unseen characteristics. This makes them difficult to classify as either a new species or an unusual type of modern human.

This artist's reconstruction by Peter Schouten suggests what the Red Deer Cave People may have looked like when alive some time between 11,500 and 14,500 years ago.
CREDIT: Peter Schouten

View full size image

For instance, the Red Deer Cave people had long, broad and tall frontal lobes like modern humans. These brain lobes are located immediately behind the forehead, and are linked with personality and behavior.

However, the Red Deer Cave people differ from modernHomo sapiens in their prominent brow ridges, thick skull bones, flat upper faces with a broad nose, jutting jaws that lack a humanlike chin, brains moderate in size by ice age human standards, large molar teeth, and primitively short parietal lobes — brain lobes at the top of the head associated with sensory data. "These are primitive features seen in our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago," Curnoe said. [Learn About the Human Skeleton]

Unique features of the Red Deer Cave people seen neither in modern nor known archaic lineages of humans include a strongly curved forehead bone, very broad nose and eye sockets, and very flat cheeks that flare widely to the sides to make space for large chewing muscles. In addition, the place where the lower jaw forms a joint with the base of the skull is unusually wide and deep.

All in all, the Red Deer Cave people are the youngest population to be found anywhere in the world whose anatomy does not comfortably fit within the range of modern humans, whether they be modern humans from 150 or 150,000 years ago, the researchers noted.

"In short, they're anatomically unique among all members of the human evolutionary tree," Curnoe told LiveScience.

Mysterious population in Asia

The Red Deer Cave people lived in China at the end of the ice age. "They survived the final and one of the worst cold episodes, known as the Last Glacial Maximum, which ended around 20,000 years ago," Curnoe said.

"The period around 15,000 to 11,000 years ago when they thrived in southwest China is known as the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, and it saw a shift to climates and ecological communities the same as those of today," Curnoe added. "It also saw the demise of the megafaunain most places, including a giant deer that was exploited by the Red Deer Cave people and recovered in large numbers from the Maludong site."

"This time also saw a major shift in the behavior of modern humans in southern China, who began to make pottery for food storage and to gather wild rice — this marks some of the first steps towards full-blown farming," Curnoe said. "The Red Deer Cave people were sharing the landscape with these early pre-farming communities, but we have no idea yet how they may have interacted or whether they competed for resources." [10 Things That Make Humans Special]

Although modern-day Asia contains more than half of the world's population, researchers still know little about humans there after our ancestors settled Eurasia about 70,000 years ago, Curnoe said. No human fossils less than 100,000 years old had been found in mainland East Asia that resembled anything other than anatomically modern humans until now. These new findings are fossil evidence that this region may not have been devoid of our evolutionary cousins.

"The discovery of the Red Deer Cave People opens the next chapter in the latest stage of the human evolutionary story, the Asian chapter," Curnoe said. "It's a story that's just beginning to be told."

Defining a human

A key reason the scientists have not yet decided how to classify the Red Deer People scientifically has to do with one of the major ongoing questions for scientists investigating human evolution — "the lack of a satisfactory biological definition of our own species,Homo sapiens," Curnoe said. "We still don't have one that most of us agree upon."

"I think the evidence is slightly weighted towards the Red Deer Cave people representing a new evolutionary line," Curnoe said. "First, their skulls are anatomically unique — they look very different to all modern humans, whether alive today or in Africa 150,000 years ago. And second, the very fact they persisted until almost 11,000 years ago when we know that very modern-looking people lived at the same time immediately to the east and south suggests they must have been isolated from them. We might infer from this isolation that they either didn't interbreed or did so in a limited way."

Recent findings suggest that other, different evolutionary lines may have also lived in the region, such as the "hobbit" or Homo floresiensis on the island of Flores in Indonesia.

"This paints an amazing picture of diversity, one we had no clue about until this last decade," Curnoe said.

The Red Deer Cave people might possibly even be related to a mysterious branch of humanity known as the Denisovans only discovered in the past two years, whose DNA suggests they were neither like us nor Neanderthals.

"It is certainly possible that the Red Deer Cave people (represent)  an interbreeding event between modern humans and some other population like the Denisovans," Curnoe said.

Ultimately, to see how closely or distantly related the Red Deer Cave people are to modern humans or even the Denisovans, the scientists want to extract and test DNA from the fossils. "We've had one attempt already, but without success," Curnoe said. "We'll just have to wait and see if we're successful in our future work."

The scientists detailed their findings online March 14 in the journal PLoS ONE.

By Charles Choi


http://www.livescience.com/19039-human-species-china-cave.html 

Are Zionists' really planning to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque by artificial Earthquake?

Head of Quds Supreme Court Yusuf Ade'is warned about the Zionist regime's plots to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque through artificial earthquakes. 

 

"This action (creating artificial earthquake) is not difficult for the Zionist regime since the drilling operations around the (al-Aqsa) Mosque has worn off the foundations of the Mosque's building," Ade'is told FNA on Saturday. 

He further cautioned that officials and rabbis of Zionist settlements have recently attended a series of overt and covert meetings coordinated with Israeli defense ministry to work out plans to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque. 

In light of the Arab and Muslim world's passive stance, the Zionist regime takes any action it wants very freely and breaks sanctuaries and Judaizes the Quds city without being questioned by the international community. 

In April 2011, the Al Aqsa Foundation for Islamic Endowment (Waqf) and Heritage reported that the Israeli Authorities are going on with their excavations under the Al Aqsa Mosque to create a network of tunnels under and around the very important mosque. 

The foundation stated that occupation is penetrating areas beneath the mosque and its surroundings through excavations that have been escalated during the last few months. 

The foundation added that the excavations and digging are also being conducted under the Al Boraq Wall near the Moghrabi Gate (Bab Al Magharba), Al Silsila Gate (Gate of the Chain), and Al Mat-hara Gate. 

A senior Palestinian journalist in an article last month stressed that protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque from fanatic Zionist Jews is a vital responsibility of every Muslim. 

In an editorial in Al-Jazeerah website, Khalid Amayreh called on Muslims to protect Islam's holy places in the Holy Quds (Jerusalem). 

"Attacking or destroying or burning the Islamic house of worship of 1400 years would spark off religious wars between Muslims and Jews, wars that would only end when the redeemer or Jewish Messiah appears," he said in the article. 

Palestinian officials have repeatedly warned that the Israeli Quds municipality continues its attempts to Judaize East Quds (Jerusalem) through the renaming of Arab street names and monuments in the city. 

As part of what the municipality calls "infrastructure restoration and area development", authorities fenced off areas around the city's historic Damascus Gate to do name and landscape changes as part of the Judaizing of the city. 


http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9012151827 

Woolly Mammoth set to walk Earth again?

• Controversial scientist created world's first cloned dog 

• Remains found in Siberia last year to be used

• Research 'could begin this year' 

A woolly mammoth preserved in permafrost in Siberia could walk the Earth again after 10,000 years, after Russian academics signed a deal with a controversial Korean scientist to clone the animal.

Hwang Woo-Suk – who created the world’s first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005 – will implant the nucleus from a mammoth cell into an elephant egg to create a mammoth embryo. 

The embryo will then be implanted into an elephant’s womb. The Koreans say research could begin this year. 

South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk (L) shakes hands with Vasily Vasiliev (R), vice director of North-Eastern Federal University of Russia's Sakha Republic, after signing an agreement on joint research to clone a mammoth

A painting by Friedrich Wilhelm Kuhnert, (1865 - 1926) shows woolly mammoths - the creature could walk the Earth again for the first time in 10,000 years thanks to the new research

Exciting: Mammoth bones like this one have been dug up many times before, but finding one with undamaged genes has proven a challenge (file picture)

Vasily Vasiliev, vice rector of North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic, signed the deal with Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation this week.

The agreeement follows the discovery of mammoth bones with well-preserved bone marrow in Siberia last summer.

Hwang Woo-Suk is a controversial figure some of whose research into human cloning was shown to be fake.

But since then, his institute has successfully cloned other creatures such as cows, dogs and coyotes. 

'The first and hardest mission is to restore mammoth cells,'  Sooam researcher, Hwang In-Sung, told AFP. 'This will be a really tough job, but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals.'

The Korean biotech foundation said research would begin this year, as soon as the Russians ship remains. 

South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk smiles after signing an agreement on joint research with North-Eastern Federal University of Russia's Sakha Republic

Fertile land: The thigh bone was discovered in the permafrost soil of Siberia as were these tusks which came from an entire 23,000-year-old mammoth dug up in 1999

The Russian academics are already in negotation with Japan's Kinki University for joint research next year aiming to recreate the giant mammal. 

Mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago.

But the discovery in August in Siberia has increased the chances of a successful cloning.

Global warming has thawed ground in eastern Russia that is usually almost permanently frozen, leading to the discoveries of a number of frozen mammoths, the report said.

By ROB WAUGH 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2114359/Woolly-mammoth-walk-Earth-Russians-ship-Siberian-remains-Korean-cloning-scientist.html