Your comment supposes that (1) not a lot of people were talking about the idea back then and (2) that we have made significant progress in cloning extinct anima

Your comment supposes that (1) not a lot of people were talking about the idea back then and (2) that we have made significant progress in cloning extinct animals I think a lot of people were talking about the idea back then and also we've had very little progress since then (despite flowery "news" articles like OP)