Posted on 04/18/2005 8:08:56 AM PDT by Drew68
Scientists with the Mammoth Creation Project hope to find a frozen woolly mammoth specimen with sperm DNA. The sperm DNA would then be injected into a female elephant; by repeating the procedure with offspring, a creature 88 percent mammoth could be produced within fifty years.
"This is possible with modern technology we already have," said Akira Iritani, who is chairman of the genetic engineering department at Kinki University in Japan and a member of the Mammoth Creation Project. However, the DNA in mammoth remains found to date has been unusable, damaged by time and climate changes. "From a geologist's point of view, the preservation of viable sperm is very unlikely, and this is so far confirmed by the poor condition of cells in the mammoth carcasses," said Andrei Sher, Russian paleontologist and mammoth expert.
Woolly mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago as warming weather reduced their food sources. Although only about a hundred specimens have been found, as many as ten million mammoths are believed buried in permanently frozen Russian soil.
Irtani has already picked out a preserve for living mammoths in northern Siberia; this "Pleistocene Park" would feature extinct species of deer, woolly rhinoceroses and maybe even saber-toothed cats, along with the mammoths.
In his novel Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton popularized the idea of using dinosaur DNA taken from mosquito-like insects trapped in amber to create a Jurassic Park of recreated dinosaurs. Unhappily for the Pleistocene Park planners, both books and all three movies ended badly for most of the participants, including the investors. Also, astute scientists are already pointing out that these experiments would merely create mammoth-like creatures, not mammoths themselves. This wasn't pointed out until the third movie in the Jurassic Park series.
Read more at Woolly Mammoth Resurrection.
Bingo! Got it in one.
You're beginning to learn. That which Hollywood tells you is not necessarily fact.
"Surely there are better things to spend money on, no?"
Not really. We could use a few mammoths about now actually. This definitely beats 10 tons of consumer garbage!
Extinction is expensive
First of all, a mammoth revived in this way would obviously resurrect no microbes with it directly from the past.
Second, if there were some fearsome microbe lurking around in mammoths then it would've thawed along with the mammoths when taken out of the permafrost (but surely in a degraded state). Researchers have actually searched for such things.
Third, a microbe that is so non-adaptive that it hasn't had a host since mammoths went extinct is not likely to mutate into anything that threatens humans. Actually, such a microbe is almost certainly extinct itself.
Fourth, any microbe that infected mammoth that was likely to jump the interspecies barrier would almost certainly be hanging out at the very least in elephants today.
Finally, the population of mammoth is not likely to be large enough to sustain much of a population or much evolution, as microbes go. It would be decades, at the very least, before it was and that would be plenty of time to detect any fearsome, novel microbes and our own medical tech would advance dramatically in that time (esp. broad-spectrum antiviral medicine).
What I find interesting is the number of owls that live in my neighborhood. I'm in a heavily developed area, much denser than the average suburb, and on any spring night I can count at least half a dozen owls hooting and screeching.
Some unexpected creatures have adapted nicely to human civilization. I suppose it's the supply of rats.
Beware, foolish mortal! You tinker with forbidden knowledge!
</maniac mode>
Some microbes have been frozen for 250 MILLION years and revived fairly easily.
Yes, but they haven't managed to get out of bed yet, today. Never know what might happen.
You sound like a fundamentalist Luddite. Seriously.
You mean like a lifetime subscription to Soap Opera Digest? Or thousand dollar a pound beef? No frivolous spending on your part I guess. Ain't the free market great?
You mean like a lifetime subscription to Soap Opera Digest? Or thousand dollar a pound beef? No frivolous spending on your part I guess. Ain't the free market great?
Both the common cold and the flu are induced by very adaptive viruses. Such a virus would not be waiting around for a mammoth to come play host.
"Not just big, hairy elephants, but inbred crazy big hairy elephants. Sounds like the Appalachian Republican Party."
Not funny. I take offense to that remark.
PC BS.
It's unquestionable that humans hunted mammoths. What's doubtful is the idea that they could have been hunted to extinction by early humans.
With just stone tipped spears, a mammoth hunt would have required most of the hunters in the community to encircle and bring the animal down.
And once killed, it would take a major part of the day to butcher the carcass with stone tools and then take the organs, meat & bones back to the settlement.
So a mammoth find that doesn't have a butchered skull (brains) or cracked bones (marrow) is unlikely to be a human kill.
Another satisfied customer!
"Catfish don't stand up well to being frozen solid."
I agree fresh catfish have a better texture, but the difference is not too perceptible provided there's no freezer burn.
Not getting out of bed has unintended consequences.
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