The answer depends on what you're willing to accept as "de-extinction." If you mean a pigeon born with some passenger pigeon traits, or an elephant born with mammoth-like traits, it could happen within a few years to a decade. How long before de-extinction is a reality? Dinosaurs had been gone for a very long time by then. The limit of DNA survival, which we’d need for de-extinction, is probably around one million years or less. Not a dinosaur, like a Tyrannosaurus Rex? I wouldn't want to run into him in my backyard. When the largest of these bears stood on his hind legs, he would have been nearly 12 feet tall. I would be most afraid of the giant short-faced bear. If the dodo were to be brought back, it could be restored to protected habitats on Mauritius, where people could go to observe dodos in their native habitat. It's very silly looking and has several really weird traits: It can't fly, it retains juvenile characteristics and-obviously-it had no particular fear of humans as predators. What extinct animal would be the most fun to bring back? Before mammoth de-extinction proceeds beyond the first stages of sequencing and manipulating genomes, we need to know much more about how to perform these later steps in ways that are not harmful to elephants. We would need elephant eggs, elephant maternal hosts and elephant surrogate families to raise the unextinct mammoths before releasing them into the wild. Problematically, mammoth de-extinction would necessarily involve working with and manipulating female elephants. In my mind, the mammoth is a great choice for both of these reasons. The best choice would be an animal that could not only inspire people to be interested in science and technology but that also would have a net positive impact on the environment. Because there are so many steps along the way to de-extinction, there is no particular species that is an ideal candidate for being brought back to life. What extinct animal would you most like to bring back to life? In a recent interview, we discussed the practicality of de-extinction, and the lighter sides of genetic tinkering. In her recent book How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, Shapiro builds on her vast experience studying ancient DNA (from woolly mammoths and bison to dodos and passenger pigeons) to offer a primer on the steps required and the questions to answer before species resurrection can become a reality. Exhilarating because of the unprecedented opportunities to understand life and boost conservation efforts, but terrifying in part for its ethical quandaries. Resurrecting extinct animals is both “exhilarating and terrifying,” says Beth Shapiro, an expert in ancient DNA and a biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |