The Wild Plan To Bring Back Woolly Mammoths

Woolly Mammoths could soon make a comeback. A new company is on a mission to create a mammoth-elephant hybrid, and their reason might surprise you.

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What if I told you that there’s a plan to bring back wooly mammoths back to Siberia? Wild right?!? And if resurrecting a 6-ton creature that’s been extinct for about 4,000 years isn’t crazy enough, wait till you hear this…they’re hoping to enlist these shaggy creatures to help us solve a mammoth-sized problem.

Mammoths were great ecosystem engineers. They knocked down trees and shrubs, making room for light colored grasses that reflected more sunlight than the darker trees, keeping ground temperatures cooler.

In the winter, they trampled through the snow, exposing the ground to the arctic chill. By maintaining their grassland home, they also protected a perpetually-frozen layer of carbon-rich soil underneath, called permafrost. By the end of the last Ice Age though, most of the mammoths vanished, and the grasses of the steppe did too.

We don’t know whether to point the finger at humans, climate, or some other cause, but what we do know is that the ecosystem changed significantly.

#geneticengineering #crispr #cas9 #woollymammoths #Seeker #Elements

Read More:
AFTER 10,000 YEARS OF EXTINCTION, THIS IS WHEN WOOLLY MAMMOTHS WILL WALK THE EARTH AGAIN
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/what-you-need-to-know-about-mammoth-de-extinction
With starting capital of $15 million and four-to-six years of research, Lamm tells Inverse the company could produce a “herd” of woolly mammoths calves for the first time since the Ice Age. This means the first baby mammoths could roam the tundra by 2027 or earlier.

Woolly mammoth resurrection project receives $15 million boost
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/18/world/woolly-mammoth-science-newsletter-wt-scn/index.html
This bold plan is fraught with ethical issues. Some scientists question if we know enough to make such an attempt -- and the larger point of such an undertaking. But the thought of being up close with a once-extinct creature is a tantalizing one.

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/14/1036884561/dna-resurrection-jurassic-park-woolly-mammoth
Scientists Say They Could Bring Back Woolly Mammoths. But Maybe They Shouldn't
"If you can create a mammoth or at least an elephant that looks like a good copy of a mammoth that could survive in Siberia, you could do quite a bit for the white rhino or the giant panda," he tells NPR.

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