We are well aware of how all Jurassic Park movies ended: crazy amount of deaths and destructions, and if anything, we learned that dinosaurs in modern day where helpless homo sapiens roam freely equals to bad news. But of course, those fictional scenarios won’t deter researchers from Harvard University from trying to play god. And if you are thinking: “god no, they are going to recreate dinosaurs from a fossilized mosquito?” Well, the good news is, there’s no mosquito to draw DNA from, but yes, they are indeed recreating an extinct prehistoric creature.
The only reprieve here is, T-rex won’t be recreated but a relatively harmless woolly mammoth will be born through the act of man and if you think it is all just paper talk, well, we have news for you: scientists said they are less than two years away from “effectively producing a baby mammoth.” And we have the 39,000-year-old female woolly (named ‘Yuka’) found almost perfectly frozen in the Siberian permafrost to thank. The researchers plan to splice the mammoth DNA from the ancient and surprisingly, well preserved specimen with that of the an Asian elephant.
The research actually began way back in 2015 and the progress so far has been optimistic. At least it is optimistic enough to allow geneticist George Church to let Guardian in on the plan of having a mammoth walking the Earth by 2019. Without going much into the ‘details’, the process basically involves nurturing a mammoth embryo created from the aforementioned splicing in an artificial womb and hope it, well, grows. If it does grow, we will indeed be witnessing a crazy history made and seeing a living, breathing majestic extinct creature in real-life.
While there’s no doubt questions about morality or whatnot, on the grand scheme of things, this progress could assist mankind in fighting climate change by preventing tundra permafrost from melting and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and it can also help endangered Asian elephant to survive. There is also a side benefit to this research too. The knowledge and genetic engineering techniques gained could also “lead to age-reversal medical technology for humans” in ten years time. Wait, you mean, we are not looking for fountain of youth anymore? Hmmm…
Image and source via All That Is Interesting.
