Scientists Aim to Revive the Woolly Mammoth

live Science ^ | 11 Apr 05 | Bill Christensen

[Drew68]

Scientists Aim to Revive the Woolly Mammoth

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.

[The Great Yazoo]

Both the common cold and the flu are induced by very adaptive viruses.

My point is simply that science has utterly failed to cure the common cold or the flu. Consequently, your faith that medical technology would certainly and quickly respond to unknown illnesses hosted by resurrected species is misplaced.

[Physicist]

Yes, but they tend to be more snuggly.

[The Great Yazoo]

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.

Not to mention fighting off the wolves, bears, foxes, hyenas, vultures, and other carrion-eating scavengers that populated Siberia's frozen plains.

[Drew68]

Surely there are better things to spend money on, no?

Well, we could always add onto the $6 BILLION a year we spend trying to find a cure for AIDS --an entirely preventable disease.

[dread78645]

I suppose it's the supply of rats.

On the menu (bottom of the page).

[AntiGuv]

There's no reason whatsoever to think a mammoth - especially a mammoth bred via elephants - would host any illnesses not hosted by elephants. This is all the more likely if said mammoth is of a small community of small range in a monitored environment.

[Lazamataz]

Yes, but they tend to be more snuggly.

Which also has unintended consequences.

[js1138]

I've got nearly the whole list in my back yard. Everything except hares, lemmings, pocket gophers, porcupines and one or two others.

[The Great Yazoo]

There's no reason whatsoever to think a mammoth - especially a mammoth bred via elephants - would host any illnesses not hosted by elephants.

You may be right. I wouldn't be willing to bet my children's lives on it, though (which is my point).

[laredo44]

My point is simply that science has utterly failed to cure the common cold or the flu. Consequently, your faith that medical technology would certainly and quickly respond to unknown illnesses hosted by resurrected species is misplaced.

Maybe the the attempt to revive the mammoth will advance medical understanding in a way that facilitates cures for the common cold and the flu. Not every unintended consequence is negative, perhaps not even most. Undoubtedly, AG Bell never foresaw the Internet whizzing around the wires he devised for voice transmission.

[MeanWestTexan]

Well, it is a matter of scale.

A wooly mammoth is a near-contemporary --- American indians hunted the things, for example.

Dinosaurs and humans, in contrast, are seperated by millions of years.

[PatrickHenry]

What's doubtful is the idea that they could have been hunted to extinction by early humans.

After years of solitary research, I have discovered what happened. The Neanderthals -- tired of being pushed around by our cro-magnon ancestors -- captured all the mammoths together and then gave an ultimatum to our ancestors: "Leave this continent! If you don't, we'll kill these beasts and then commit suicide. If you have any sense of decency, go!"

[The Great Yazoo]

Not every unintended consequence is negative, perhaps not even most. Undoubtedly, AG Bell never foresaw the Internet whizzing around the wires he devised for voice transmission.

I would never argue against expanding the frontiers of human knowledge. I don't, for example, fret much about such things as genetically modified agricultural products or nuclear energy.

Having said that, replicating the DNA of once-extinct creatures makes me nervous. I am not so certain of the abilities of medical science to deal with things that could go wrong. I have even less faith in the political and legal systems to do anything more than provide redress (if you can call "redress" getting judgments against bankrupt entities) if things go wrong.

[dread78645]

"How the elephant got into my pajamas I'll never know. ..."

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

What about dire wolves? It just wouldn't be right without a few dire wolves and some short faced bears.

[longtermmemmory]

now if we can extrapolate this, we can grow our own replacement organs.

[longtermmemmory]

Be careful, GLSEN will come out and say the Neanderthals were really a society of homosexuals which went extinct due to a lack of sensitivity training and acceptance of homosexual marriage.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

There seems to be a conflict over why the mammoths died ...

There is a major conflict. Also a question of when they died out. It might have been as recent as the last few hundred years in North America.

[dread78645]

After years of solitary research, I have discovered what happened.

I came up with the same theory ...

Remind me not to do any research with a bottle of Old No. 9.

[longtermmemmory]

You can't UNcarve wood.

Evolution does not work that way. You could never really go back to a common ancestor any more than you could take appart an 2005 cadalac and find an 1959 el dorado underneath. (darn)