A leading geneticist is on the hunt for an 'adventurous woman' to help turn back the hands of time - and give birth to a Neanderthal baby.

George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School, believes he can bring back the extinct ancestor of modern man after more than 33,000 years.

Contrary to popular belief, Neanderthals were in fact a highly intelligent race and Prof Church believes they could be recreated through modern medicine.

He told German magazine, Der Spiegel: 'I have already managed to attract enough DNA from fossil bones to reconstruct the DNA of the human species largely extinct. Now I need an adventurous female human.