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Scientists are racing to clone the extinct woolly mammoth and other prehistoric beasts, perhaps one day creating a real life 'prehistoric zoo'. Credit: AFP It may seem like science fiction, but it's not. Not even ten years after the first mammal was cloned, scientists are racing to clone the first extinct species. February 2007 marks 10 years since Scottish scientists announced they had successfully cloned Dolly the sheep. It was a huge accomplishment, and the culmination of decades of research. Now she sits at the top of a long list of clones including cats, pigs, cows, a dog, monkeys, horses and goats. Perhaps, though, the most significant addition to this ever-growing list was Noah the gaur. The gaur is an endangered, large, dark-coloured ox with a humplike ridge on its back and white or yellow stockings on all four legs - and its numbers are steadily declining. Noah became the first member of an endangered species to be successfully cloned when he was born in 2001. He was brought to term by a surrogate mother - Bessie, a domestic cow. Unfortunately, Noah died after only two days due to an infection reportedly unrelated to cloning. The U.S. biotechnology company that cloned Noah, Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT), proclaimed their work as altruistic. "We don't see this as a profit centre for the company," according to Michael West, President of ACT. "Our thought is simply that the human species has casually used technology to despoil the planet, the least we can do is use the technologies we work with every day to make a small contribution to save innocent and endangered species." Born along with Noah was an intriguing new method of maintaining biodiversity. Approximately 100 species continue to go extinct each day, and governments and conservation groups are fighting to protect the animals endemic to their lands. The San Diego Zoo, in the U.S., hosts a frozen repository of tissue from 675 endangered species. Twenty-five years ago the Frozen Zoo was filled only with sperm and ovaries. Now it also holds cell-lines and tissue samples from any part of the body. Using skin cells from the Frozen Zoo, ACT cloned another endangered species in 2003. Two bantengs - another Southeast Asian ox - were created using the same basic method as for Dolly the sheep. The company took DNA from banteng skin cells and put it in the egg of a domestic cow that had already had its DNA removed. What was unique with the banteng was that a member of a different species provided the egg. Nature has its own frozen zoo. Unlike the youthful San Diego Zoo, in existence for only 25 years, the vast wastelands of Siberia have held animals trapped in permafrost for as long as 200,000 years. This repository hasn't escaped the attention of ambitious scientists. In 2002 Akira Iritani, from Kinki University in Japan, announced plans for his team to create 'Pleistocene Park' - a home for resurrected woolly mammoths, extinct for approximately 3,500 years. Later additions would include the woolly rhinoceros, which hasn't roamed the Earth for more than 10,000 years. It is a race against time, partly because climate change is melting the permafrost in Siberia, uncovering ancient animal remains at an increasing rate. Once uncovered, the specimens begin to rot, degrading DNA that may have remained intact for eons. Readers' comments
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so..
they dont think dinosaurs can really be brought back?
is it to far of a stretch?
Stretched Dinos
Actually yes, it is a stretch. The Dinos that we have today are all fossils. Whereas the mammoths are frozen... like in deep freezer. And if such a freezing happened swiftly, there is a good chance that it would have caused minimal damage to the cells and undamaged DNA could be extracted out of it.
when you bring any life into
when you bring any life into the world, you are left with a responsibility to give it the best life that it can have. people should not have children if they cannot properly care for them and scientists should not bring animals into a world that they are no longer suited for. rather i think the efforts should be put towards making the world a better place for the wildlife that the human race has not yet destroyed. what is the point of resarecting a wolly mammoth if in the mean time tigers, rhinos, elephants, and orangutans all go exctinct. do we simply clone them back too to live out their lives in zoos for our entertainment? stop looking to the past for a cheap thrill and look to the present and the future to see what can be done to prevent unnecessary extinction of animals from this time period.
Bringing Back the Mammoths
I would hope you are right in that if mammoths are brought back through cloning that we responsibly give it the best life. If "best" means keeping one in a zoo, so it can be properly cared for, then I don't really see a problem with that.
In regards to preventing the extinction of animals...that is something that has always been a goal of the Human Race. But your reasoning creates a double standard. If you say scientists should not bring animals such as wooly mammoths back from extinction because they are no longer suited to live here in this time, then you should also allow animals that are on the brink of extinction to simply become extinct for the same reason?
My feeling is that if we have the knowledge and the ability to bring a species back, then why not try it? I don't think it's playing God to do so. I'm not saying we should bring back a species such as a dinosaur that could possibly be a threat to human life. But I don't see why an animal like the mammoth could threaten the human population. And if we did bring them back, it wouldn't be like Jurassic Park where we simply let them roam freely almost immediately after they are cloned until we have studied their characteristics thoroughly -- not for months, but for years or generations -- before doing so.
Humans are an amazing species whose quest for knowledge is unparalleled. What better way is there to learn about an extinct species and give them a second chance at life than to use the knowledge we have in cloning and bring them back.
i say
i would say bring one back in see if they attack the human race becouse they may be scared of neanderthals but they may not be scared of the humans.
my wife thinks they should not bring none back at all.
but give it a shot in see what will happen..
willie ray brown.
They had their time
Scientists should not be trying to bring back extinct species, they died out for a reason. with the earths surface heating up more and more the wooly mammoth wouldn't be able to tolerate the current climatic changes. scientists should be spending their time trying to solve more realistic problems.
How many people can truly
How many people can truly say "I CLONED A WOOLY MAMMOTH!!!!" If i was a scientist i would rather clone mammoths then work towards one of you "realistic" problems. Realistic is not a challenge. Realistically i will never have the opportunity to punch you in the face, however i like the challenge of trying to do so anyways :)
I honestly think it is well
I honestly think it is well within the nature of human beings to get so excited about a new process or technology or discovery as to temporarily suspend moral considerations on whether or not to actually follow through with a certain act, until such a time (years/centuries) that the novelty runs out and truly ethical conservation/research can begin.
An example that comes to mind is the giant squid, a species that is so rarely seen that only recently have there been photographs or video taken of a live specimen. What strikes me is that when the video was taken of the live squid the scientists in question, in their zeal to capture a living representative of the species, unfortunately killed the animal which doesn't survive well near surface waters. In this case, the (whole) carcass still provides scientific information, so even such a "loss" is a gain. The very fact that it is a "first-ever" situation causes otherwise conservative scientists to suspend consideration of a living creature's welfare for the sake of scientific knowledge. I would think that years from now, however, if more live animals could be collected, the need to endanger living squids through capture would vanish as the "novelty-factor" wears out.
In a similar fashion, this new cloning technology simply begs scientists to explore its possibilities, and only after a signficant period of "first species of xxx-type to be revived" type of sensationalism goes away, will proper consideration be given to how it should properly be utilised in the scope of modern global ecology.
That being said, I think the novelty of a "rabbit monkey" is just too amazing to pass up...for now. At least until either the world has far too many rabbit monkeys that they are no longer anything special (perhaps "two" is enough to fill that quota, really) or until some higher power descends upon us to tell us to please stop making rabbit monkeys because they are offensive to some cosmic balance.
Human responsibility
As we are at the top of the food chain here on planet earth, it is our responsibility to preserve fellow earthlings including those of the past.
We are almost near full circle in regards to attaining technologies of our past....let's just try to do things right this time.
Having an island for the purpose of resurrecting species from the distant past would be a great achievement for mankind.
Ehrenfeld's article is food for thought
Ehrenfeld's article is food for thought and should be mandatory reading in this debate. In a nutshell and somewhat provokingly, in this particular case it may be boiled down to this: spend millions on the slim chance that mammoths can be cloned - or do we want our children to know that Siberian Tigers roam their native lands, instead of existing as a dwindling stock of inbred crippled basket cases in zoos, if at all?
Dozens and dozens of species go extinct each day. The money spent on fantasy cloning projects is unavailable to protect any of them.