The idae may not be so far fetched. I seem to recall a programme where some scientists were searching for rapidly frozen mammoths in Siberia, but they were looking for male mammoths so that they could harvest the frozen sperm. This was to be introduced to an elephants' egg and a cross breed elephant/mammoth would be created. Do this enough times, and then the elephant is breeded out until you get something that is almost a mammoth. It would never be 1005 mammoth though as it will contain a part of that original elephant.
Saying that, since then we have had the cloned sheep Dolly, and I believe the way this is done is by taking the egg and neutralising it with radioactive material or some other wacky method, and then a cell is introduced from the creature to be cloned. Then, the cell multiplies and becomes the cloned animal. Or that was how I understood it. This would mean a pure mammoth could be created, not sure if it could be done in an elephant though.
I think the above is correct, but if not, hey, I'm not a scientist!
