Because we are so interested in ourselves, the first two resurrected species might be the two close cousins whom our ancestors drove to extinction:

THE NEANDERTHAL. This species and modern humans split apart some 500,000 years ago, and the Neanderthal adapted to the ice age climate that gripped its European homeland. Scientists in Germany are expected to report soon that they have decoded the full genome. No one knows if Neanderthals could speak. A living one would answer that question and many others.

Image The Sea Scorpion

THE ‘HOBBIT.’ Remains of these downsized humans, more correctly known as Homo floresiensis, were found on the island of Flores four years ago. Paleoanthropologists have been at each other’s throats ever since as to whether the pint-size people with sophisticated stone tools were a new human species or a pathological form of modern humans. Let the little floresians speak for themselves, though first we must find some of their hair.

Image The Pterodactyl Credit... Image From Hulton Archive/Getty Images

DNA lasts only 50,000 years or so, an eyeblink of evolutionary time, but genome engineers will eventually get so good at their job, one can surely assume, that they won’t need actual DNA; they will be able to calculate the DNA sequence of any known species by working backward from the genomes of their living descendants. Birds, for instance, evolved from dinosaurs. So put a few nips and tucks in a falcon’s genome and you could doubtless re-create that of a velociraptor. Let’s try resummoning these creatures from their rest in the fossil beds of extinction:

THE SEA SCORPION. These huge arthropods lived in shallow seas 450 million to 250 million years ago and grew to six feet long and more. Their champion, Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, was a monster of up to eight feet (a gigantic claw was found last year). We are used to insects and spiders being tiny creatures, confined by their breathing system to a small volume. Having a few sea scorpions around would help us understand just how big insects could grow.