SCIENTISTS WANT TO BRING BACK MAMMOTHS

Credit: Alamy

Over 10,000 years ago, the majority of woolly mammoths strode across the earth’s arctic tundra for the last time.

Now scientists dig them out of their frozen graves to study them.

Not much longer perhaps.

Colossal is a new gene-editing company with a mission to re-introduce the mammoth to the wild using never-before-seen technology.

Why? To battle climate change of course.

Ben Lamm, the company’s founder claims that they only need $15 million to turn this dream into reality.

Now the question is how soon will this come to fruition? Lamm claims that the first baby Mammoths from his herd could be roaming the Artic by 2027, just 5 years away.

However, not everyone is on their side regarding this.

Evolutionary Biologist Tori Herridge is one of those scientists.

If [this technology] genuinely does what they hope it’s going to do, that will fundamentally alter the way that we as humans interact with the natural world.

TORI HERRIDGE

Herridge warns that the project isn’t all it seems:

It isn’t de-extinction at all — you’re never going to bring back an extinct creature,” she said. “It is not the de-extinction of the mammoth; it is the genetic modification of an elephant you are creating an entirely new synthetic organism.

TORI HERRIDGE

Colossal has isolated 60 genes the mammoth used to adapt to cold environments – including the iconic shaggy coat – to insert into the genetic code of an Asian elephant.

Asian elephant – Wikipedia

You can check out the Colossal website here

All I can say is that these scientists have obviously never read a Michael Crichton novel or the movies made from his books .

Jurassic Park anyone?