Cloning Woolly Mammoths: Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong
January 18th, 2011
Scientists have announced that they are close to cloning woolly mammoths. This could take place in as little as 4 years. While we won’t exactly get Jurassic Park, we may have a real-world Ice Age Park.
The cloning process starts by taking a cell nuclei from the skin or muscle tissue of a 5000+ year-old mammoth, inserting it into a cell egg of an African elephant, and then using it as a surrogate mother for the 600-day gestation period. They say that they could start the gestation within two years. That means that within four, we’ll have mammoths roaming around.
While I’m all for reviving extinct species, woolly mammoths could impact our environment in strange ways that we haven’t foreseen. At least they shouldn’t eat us like T-Rexes, right?
[via Telegraph]
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Categories: Hacks + Mods Retro Science Fiction Strange + Wonderful Weird Science
I don’t see any problem with this at all. Really. I don’t see anyone making thousands and thousands of them. Seems more of a novelty to do this, rather than a serious case where the threshold of nature lies in the balance of a mad scientist. Whats the doomsday point? I mean, really …..whats the worse we could…..we drive them to extinction as I am sure man has done with countless species already that we don’t even know about? It would be about frigg’n time that we actually not just try to slow the process of preserving nature down….but actually take a step back in the direction of reestablishing it. If this works, and we can prove to ourselves that we can bring back an extinct species that has not seen the light of day for 10k years, there really does not seem to be any down side to me other than taking in a bit more oxygen from this planet and trying not to step in HUGE, (pardon the pun) MAMMOTH piles of dook. I think it would be a fantastic achievement. Can we name it Chewbacca?
LOL thats the perfect name for it!
Interesting idea. I wonder if they could do the same with dodos.
I think we have enough of those.