Woolly Mammoth de-extinction
A team from Sweden, the U.S. and Canada examined two woolly mammoths that died about 40,000 years apart. One woolly mammoth that died 4,300 years ago had only a tooth. The other — a calf that died about 45,000 years ago discovered in Siberia — had an almost perfectly preserved skeleton.
Their findings were published this week in the science journal Current Biology and the study was entitled ‘Complete Genomes Reveal Signatures of Demographic and Genetic Declines in the Woolly Mammoth.’
Ethically, there are those who say bringing back an extinct species should not be done. Geneticist Love Dalen was one of the researchers and he told NBC News he believes re-creating a woolly mammoth would be “cool” but he, too, has reservations.
“Our genomes bring us one critical step closer to re-creating a mammoth,” he told NBC. “I think it would be cool if it could be done, but I’m not sure it should be done.”
Extinction of woolly mammoth
The creature had a long and topsy-turvy history, the scientists found, almost becoming extinct 280,000 years ago but rallying until their final decline and demise. They first appeared about 500,000 or more years ago in the late Pleistocene Period and only disappeared 4,000 years ago, so that leaves them stomping about the planet for a good while.
Remains of the woolly mammoth, whose nearest extant cousin is the Asian elephant, have been found on every continent expect Australia and South America.
By the end they existed only on Wrangel Island, off of the Russian mainland, where the tooth of one of the beasts in the study was found. The research team found that on the island they likely died off from in-breeding, a not uncommon fate of creatures.
Should they be brought back? Even though the scientists in this latest woolly mammoth research group are not planning to do so, other scientists will absorb their findings. So now that the genie that is the genome of the woolly mammoth is out of the bottle, it may be a case of here today, though gone four thousand years ago.