(Martin Meissner/Associated Press)

The long-extinct woolly mammoth could be resurrected in as little as four years, Japanese scientists estimate.

Using a breakthrough technique first tested in 2008 to clone a mouse from another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years, a team from Kyoto University hopes to revive the mammoth from a preserved mammoth carcass.

The researchers will venture to Siberia this summer with a plan to unearth samples of mammoth tissue in the permafrost, according to The Daily Telegraph. The DNA extracted from the mammoth cells would then be inserted into an elephant's egg cells.

The elephant, they believe, could then serve as a surrogate mother for a baby mammoth, thus reviving the species about 5,000 years after extinction.

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