Actually they have only pieced together 60% of what they believe to be a DNA structure of “Neanderthal Man” from many fragments from different fossils. Then they guessed at the rest of the 40% based on their subjective viewpoint!
And to think they would want to create an actual being from this hodge podge of mixed DNA! What kind of beast would emerge?
Neanderthal man has taken a step closer to once again roaming the earth after scientists unlocked the genetic make-up of our closest relative for the first time.
Researchers announced that they had finally managed to reconstruct the entire DNA of the former species in a world breakthrough that follows a similar feat for the mammoth.
Now they believe the milestone could help discover why Neanderthal man, a short hairier version of a human, became extinct 30,000 years ago.
It also raises the possibility – although played down by scientists – that the code could be used to clone a living version of the creature.
Professor Svante Paabo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, sequenced more than one billion DNA fragments extracted from three fossilised Neanderthal bones found in a cave in Croatia.
They believe they have managed to identify the basic structure of the code – more than 60 per cent – and now aim to fill in the gaps using computer models that compare it to human and chimpanzee DNA.
The DNA also provide insights into how the genome of this extinct form differed from that of modern humans and also highlight genetic changes that enabled modern humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world, starting around 100,000 years ago.
Neanderthals were the closest relatives of currently living humans. They lived in Europe and parts of Asia until they became extinct about 30,000 years ago.
For more than a hundred years, palaeontologists and anthropologists have been striving to uncover their evolutionary relationship to modern humans.
Prof Paabo, a pioneer in the field of ancient DNA research, made the first contribution to the understanding of our genetic relationship to Neanderthals when he sequenced their mitochondrial DNA, or the engine room of the cell, in 1997.
He announced the latest milestone at the opening of the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
In order to reliably compare the Neanderthal DNA sequences to those of humans and chimpanzees, the group based in Leipzig has performed detailed studies of where chemical damage tends to occur in the ancient DNA and how it causes errors in the DNA sequences.
The researchers found that such errors occur most frequently towards the ends of molecules and that the vast majority of them are due to a particular modification of one of the bases in the DNA that occurs over time in fossil remains.
They then applied this knowledge to identify which of the DNA fragments from the fossils come from the Neanderthal genome and which from other microorganisms that have contaminated the bones during the thousands of years they lay buried in the caves.
They have also developed novel and more sensitive computer algorithms to put the Neandertal DNA fragments in order and compare them to the human genome.
Inevitably the breakthrough will evoke the idea of cloning a live version of the extinct creature.
Back in November when a team of experts announced they had sequenced the DNA of a mammoth, they brought up the possibility.
However other scientists played down the chances of it becoming reality.
Aside from the moral questions such an act would provoke they pointed out that it would be “like trying to build a car with only 80 per cent of the parts, and knowing that some of them are already broken”.
True Discernment 
Neanderthal Resurrection The Latest Ethical Dilemma For Futurists
Everyone knows Jurassic Park and the story of an eccentric entrepreneur who tries to build the world’s most insane theme park with living relics from prehistoric times.
What if somebody tried to do the same thing, not with animals from the past, but with “people” from the past?
A recent New York Times article reported that a new genetic breakthrough has raised the scientific possibility of cloning a neanderthal. Cloning normal human beings is controversial enough, but the issue of neanderthal resurrection has another ethical twist on top of that: what rights would these beings have? Would they even be considered “people?”
Ron Bailey has an article at Reason about the ethical issues of neanderthal resurrection, and he does a little speculating about what we would do with such beings:
So what if we bring back Neanderthals and it turns out that their intellectual capacities are so dissimilar from ours that they cannot cope successfully with modern life? Should we control their fertility so that they go extinct again? This comes uncomfortably close to the eugenic arguments used to justify sterilizing people who were deemed mentally defective in the 20th century. Or perhaps Neanderthals could be placed in reservations where they would be allowed to develop without further interference from modern humans. Would this be akin to confining them to a zoo?
Bailey doesn’t really get into why we would want to bring back neanderthals. But with his last point about a zoo, I can see one profit motive that could attract very adventurous investors.
Here’s a more troubling business idea: what if somebody cloned neanderthals not for us to look at, but to work in our home as servants–a Morlock-like underclass. But we know what happened with the Morlocks in HG Wells’ story–they didn’t stay servants.
Would Neanderthals even have the capacity to be reliable servants? As Bailey says, we’ll never know for sure unless we try.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/risky-business/2009/02/18/neanderthal-resurrection-the-latest-ethical-dilemma-for-futurists.html