I actually assumed this article was a few years old since I've read several variants covering the exact same people and species. If you like this kind of thing, far and away my favorite piece I've ever read on un-extincting a species is "Pleistocene Park"[1]. It's ~9k words or so, but really great.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/pleisto...