Prometea was the first horse successfully cloned, born in Italy in 2003.
Researchers at the Laboratory of Reproductive Technology in Cremona produced Prometea using somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same broad cloning method used to create Dolly the sheep. Her genetic donor was an adult mare, and Prometea was born on 28 May 2003.
The achievement was important because horses have a long reproductive cycle and are difficult to clone compared with some laboratory animals. Prometea was not created to produce a new horse breed; the research explored reproductive biology and the preservation of valuable genetics.
Prometea is sometimes confused with Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion, the first cloned horse used in an officially recognized breeding program. Dolly, born in 1996, was the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, but she was a sheep, not a horse.