July 30: When extinction was not final

On July 30, 2003, the Pyrenean ibex became the first extinct animal brought back through cloning. Tonight's film: Jurassic Park (1993).

Have you ever read something and suddenly realized that the sci-fi you have known since childhood is slowly becoming real? Today is one of those days, at least according to the calendar.

On July 30, 2003, in a Spanish lab near Zaragoza, a tiny ibex kid was born. Out of 57 implantations, seven surrogate mothers became pregnant, and only one carried the pregnancy to term. As a percentage, that is a dismal result. But that single kid was the first living creature to come back from extinction. It was a Pyrenean ibex, also called a bucardo, and it was genetically identical to the last female, a goat named Celia.