Lyuba, a baby mammoth discovered in 2007 in Siberia. It is part of a special exhibit “Mammoths and Mastadons” at the Field Museum through September. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As an ecologist of ice age giants, I long ago came to terms with the fact that I will never look my study organisms in the eye.
I will never observe black-bear-sized beavers through binoculars in their natural habitats, build experimental exclosures to test the effects of mastodons on plants, or even observe a giant ground sloth in a zoo.
As a conservation paleoecologist, I study the natural experiments of the past—like climate change and extinction—to better understand the ecology of a warming, fragmented world. Admitedly, part of the appeal of the ice age past is the challenge of reconstructing long-disappeared landscapes from fragments like pollen, tiny fragments of charcoal, and bits of leaves preserved in lakes. In the absence of mammoths, for example, I rely instead on spores of fungi that once inhabited their dung.
De-extinction could change that. On Friday, a group of geneticists, conservationists, journalists, and others convened in Washington, D.C. to discuss resurrecting extinct species, including the woolly mammoth. De-extinction sounds like science fiction, but it’s rooted in very real conservation concerns. With the sequencing of the woolly mammoth genome complete and recent advancements in biotechnology, the question of whether to clone extinct species like mastodons, dodos, or the Shasta ground sloth is rapidly becoming more of a question of should, rather than how. The latter isn’t straightforward, and involves the integration of a number of cutting edge disciplines, but I’d like to focus on the former: should we clone woolly mammoths?
A growing problem I’ve had (and one which Brian Switek raises in a recent post at National Geographic) is that the de-extinction proposals are Big Ideas, but they they’re often shallow when it comes to ecology. Even the concept of “de-extinction” itself is misleading. Successfully cloning an animal is one thing; rescuing it from the black hole-like pull of extinction is another. Decades of conservation biology research has tried to determine the careful calculus of how many individuals and how much land are needed for a species to survive without major intervention, accounting for its needs for food, habitat, and other resources.
Mammoths have been extinct on continents for over ten thousand years (though dwarf versions survived into the time of the ancient Egyptians on isolated Arctic islands). Even so, the fossil record has yielded rich clues about ecology. All ethical considerations aside, from a conservation biology standpoint, what does it mean to be a mammoth?
The Latest Bing News on:
Cloning Woolly Mammoths
- Let’s Build a Zoo DLC Is Adding Dinosaurson May 26, 2022 at 6:27 pm
Let’s Build a Zoo is getting a new expansion. Springloaded has confirmed that the upcoming DLC for the indie management sim will be adding the full Jurassic Park experience. Following the launch of ...
- Let's Build a Zoo expansion adds dinosaurs, 'Caveman Meat'on May 26, 2022 at 12:56 pm
Indie management sim Let's Build a Zoo already boasts godless genetic experiments and exotic meat sales, so it was only a matter of time until developer Springloaded added the ful ...
- Woolly Mammothon May 26, 2022 at 2:32 am
The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius ... It has been proposed the species could be recreated through cloning, but this method is as yet infeasible because of the degraded state of the ...
- Why ‘De-Extinction’ Is Impossible (But Could Work Anyway)on May 9, 2022 at 10:06 am
The closest you can get to an exact genetic replica of an extinct species is a clone created from a living or preserved cell from that species. Scientists don’t have useable cells from woolly mammoths ...
- Scientists move step forward in cloning woolly mammothon May 2, 2022 at 5:00 pm
KINOKAWA, Wakayama Prefecture--Scientists confirmed signs of activity in the nuclei of cells extracted from the 28,000-year-old remains of a woolly mammoth, fostering hopes of resurrecting the ...
- 14 Extinct Animals That Could Be Resurrectedon May 31, 2021 at 10:42 pm
The research into the genome, as well as preserved genetic material, has led to work around either creating a woolly mammoth through cloning or through editing the genome of the closest living ...
- Scientists Just Came Closer Than Ever to Cloning a Woolly Mammothon March 13, 2019 at 6:54 am
In 2011, researchers discovered the frozen body of a woolly mammoth in Siberian permafrost. Now, a team of Japanese scientists has coaxed biological reactions from the mammoth’s 28,000-year-old ...
- Russians make new bid to clone woolly mammothon September 21, 2018 at 10:32 am
RUSSIAN boffins are engaged in an ambitious project to bring back the woolly mammoth from extinction in a groundbreaking cloning experiment. Scientists are searching for and studying cells in the ...
- 40,000-year-old flesh brings mammoth cloning closeron February 26, 2018 at 8:20 am
I doubt that there are many people in the world who would like to see a real-life woolly mammoth as much as I do. And yet I think cloning one would be ethically flawed,' she wrote in an opinion piece ...
- Cloning advances: From sheep and dogs to… woolly mammoths and humans?on March 23, 2017 at 5:00 am
including efforts to clone extinct woolly mammoths, using Asian elephants as surrogate mothers. But he reports human cloning would be extremely difficult – not to mention already illegal in some ...
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De-extinction
- Mouse-sized marsupial could hold key to bringing Tasmanian tiger back from extinctionon May 26, 2022 at 1:28 pm
Scientists at the University of Melbourne, Australia, hope a tiny marsupial could be the key to bringing back the thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger back from the dead ...
- More reptile species may be at risk of extinction than previously thoughton May 26, 2022 at 11:00 am
The iconic Red List of Threatened Species, published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), identifies species at risk of extinction. A study in PLOS Biology publishing May 26 ...
- Extinction threat to yellow-bill hornbills due to climate changeon May 26, 2022 at 6:15 am
Yellow-billed hornbills in the Kalahari Desert could be wiped out by 2027 due to climate change, a new study by UCT researchers found. The study found that the breeding success of the hornbills ...
- Scientists try to bring Australian ‘tiger’ back from extinctionon May 25, 2022 at 10:00 pm
When people say, 'Didn’t we learn anything from Jurassic Park?’ — well, it’s very different bringing back a velociraptor to a thylacine,” lab leader Andrew Pask said.
- The Dolittle Machine review: What if we really could talk to animals?on May 25, 2022 at 10:00 am
What would you say to a bat – or a dolphin – if you could? An ingenious radio programme by sci-fi writer Matthew de Abaitua imagines an animal-human translation machine ...
- Kennesaw State professor finds purpose, inspiration in collaborationon May 23, 2022 at 2:42 pm
He even collaborated with the theater department on a series of short plays about de-extinction and the origins of Bigfoot. In addition to working with a wide range of faculty members, McElroy said he ...
- Exemplos de 'near extinction' em uma fraseon May 22, 2022 at 1:45 am
Esses exemplos foram selecionados automaticamente e podem conter conteúdo sensível. We welcome feedback: report an example sentence to the Collins team. Leia mais… Something caused the near extinction ...
- Climate Crisis Is Driving Cousins of Zazu, From the Lion King, to Local Extinctionon May 20, 2022 at 3:08 pm
The yellow-billed hornbill, cousins of fan-favorite Zazu from The Lion King, faces local extinction due to the climate crisis. Between 2008 and 2019, researchers investigated the effects of high air t ...
- Extinction Rebellion protesters storm five-star central London hotelon May 17, 2022 at 6:20 am
Extinction Rebellion activists have stormed a five-star hotel in central London in protest of an oil summit taking place on Tuesday. Three demonstrators found their way into the conference suite in ...
- Extinction Rebellion storm energy summit setting off flares at Mayfair hotelon May 17, 2022 at 3:54 am
EXTINCTION REBELLION activists have stormed a an energy summit five-star hotel in London, gluing themselves together in the lobby, spraying black paint and letting off flares in fresh anti-oil ...