The New Science of De-extinction

Mammoths went extinct practically yesterday. This might not seem to be the case in the context of a human life span—the last of the woollies perished on an island north of Siberia around 4,000 years ago—but from the perspective of all Earth’s history we’re living on a planet with a mammoth-shaped hole in it. As Helen Pilcher explains in “Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-Extinction,” some researchers want to change that. Almost every new mammoth discovery raises questions of cloning. In 2013, for example, Russian researchers presented an incredibly well-preserved mammoth found... intact down to what was later confirmed to be degraded blood running from the thawing carcass. Blaring headlines touted .... how we’d soon all be lining up to see resurrected mammoths at the zoo. But just as “Jurassic Park” skipped over the difficulties in turning ancient DNA into living organisms, modern fantasies about riding extinct elephants to work “Flintstones”-style have overlooked the extremely complicated nature of trying to re-create what has been lost.

The push for de-extinction, Ms. Pilcher says, is going on at various labs all over the world....... So, then, could scientists bring back Tyrannosaurus, king of the dinosaurs, or, in Ms. Pilcher’s pick for king of the birds, the dodo? And what about the King himself, Elvis Presley? Can genetic innovation return us to lost worlds, be they the Cretaceous or Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” heyday?
The answer, for the most part, is “No.”"..."

Click to expand...

mbig said:

We've seen this mentioned over the last few years. Now a new book, reviewed below, explores the possibilities and issues. I share her doubts but Not complete pessimism/objections, especially on more recently extinct species.
I will keep it short, perhaps too short to be satisfactory/informing, because I have been recently reminded about excerpt length. No pix either.
I don't know if WSJ Book Review is paywalled as the main articles.
IAC, if one googles the title one can usually find a successful google referral link.

The New Science of De-extinction
Could scientists bring back Tyrannosaurus, king of the dinosaurs, or the king of the birds, the dodo? And what about the King himself, Elvis Presley? Brian Switek reviews “Bring Back the King” by Helen Pilcher.
Brian Switek - Wall Street Journal - Jan. 20, 2017
The New Science of De-extinction - WSJ

Click to expand...

longview said:

I think some of these efforts are well underway,
Wild supercows return to Europe - CNN.com
I have read that they started working on this over a century ago,(with the tools available at the time),
and now think they are very close.
On a side note, I wonder how Dodo taste?

Click to expand...

American said:

I think they need to be careful with this stuff. You don't just go cloning extinct species back into existence without thinking it through. There is a natural order to how the earth works, and there could be unintended consequences.

Click to expand...

American said:

I think they need to be careful with this stuff. You don't just go cloning extinct species back into existence without thinking it through. There is a natural order to how the earth works, and there could be unintended consequences.

Click to expand...

Tim the plumber said:

's OK, we killed them before when we did not have guns.

Click to expand...

"The process of de-extinction is about working with a genetic code of an extinct species," Novak explained. "And dinosaurs went extinct way too long ago for us to retrieve any DNA from their fossils. DNA might last a million years if it's frozen in permafrost, but otherwise, it degrades really quickly. "So, we're restricted to working with things in the 10,000- to 100,000 year timeframe," he said.
(And no, despite Michael Crichton's promises, DNA won't even survive inside a mosquito preserved in amber. Following some pushback on the dino front from commenters—and the host—Novak explained that he spent the early part of his twenties looking for useful dinosaur DNA and "there's nothing there.")
But even if there are no dinosaurs..., that doesn't mean there aren't some really cool de-extinctions on the horizon..."
[.....]

Click to expand...