Ever since the smash movie
"Jurassic Park" implanted the idea of genetic resurrection of extinct species in the modern popular consciousness--the gothic novel
Frankenstein was the first popular treatment of the subject of reanimation--efforts to find sufficient DNA material to allow an attempt at cloning an extinct animal back into existence have accelerated. The once science fiction feat is closer to reality as more well-preserved mammoth carcasses
(Mammuthus primigenius) are being found in Siberia because of melting perma-frost. The last wooly mammoths survived as a dwarf race into the 1700s BC, but most of the kind were extinct by the end of the Pleistocene Era, 10,000 BC. Scientists think that the mammoth succumbed to a combination of climate change and early human predation. It is closely related to the Indian elephant according to studies of the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of
Mammuthus primigenius One possible way to clone a mammoth would be to implant intact mammoth DNA into an unfertilized Indian elephant egg, and then implant the egg into a female elephant for development.
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| Mammoth gravé de La Grotte des Combarelles |
Scientific teams from Sakha Republic's mammoth museum and Japan's Kirki University will launch a project to create a mammoth after a well preserved thigh bone was discovered in August. Well preserved bone marrow cells are necessary for the nuclei implantation technique to work. Japanese scientists have found vital DNA in mice that have been frozen for 16 years. In 2009 Spanish researchers succeeded in cloning an extinct Pyrenean ibex, but the animal died shortly after birth. American and Australian researchers are making progress on sequencing the genome of the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger, a carnivorous marsupial that was hunted into extinction in the 1930s. Scientists say it is only a matter of time before an extinct animal is brought back from the dead, and most likely it will be a wooly mammoth not a T. Rex. However, the ethics of reincarnating an extinct animal are not as well developed as the bioengineering.
