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How To Clone A Mammoth
psyconaut writes: "In a story that sounds more fitting for the big screen than the London Times, Japanese researchers are planning on cloning a mammoth by impregnating an Indian elephant. Apparently the source of the DNA will be a newly found mammoth specimen in Siberia. Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years."
I think they should spend less time fucking around and more time cloning something cool. Like some kind of half human, half wolfe hybrid
About 100 mammoths have been recovered in Russia, among them the world's finest museum examples. These include the skeleton of the Adams mammoth, found in Yakutia in 1806, and the Berezovka mammoth, recovered in northeastern Siberia in 1901. This had an erect penis, thought to be because it died of asphyxiation. The stuffed Berezovka mammoth and the skeleton are both on display at the Zoological Museum of St Petersburg.
I mean, c'mon, isn't that just begging for the trolls to just run with it?
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
So when are they going to clone some sabre-tooth
tigers?
Do not underestimate the power of the Dark side
Perhaps they can use the cloned mammoths to make new elephants; by 2052 they will be extinct.
- Ost
---- Sig. gone.
Hate to say it but any civilization this fixated on genetic mutation has a deep, deep current of weirdness.
I'm waiting for my first real mammoth steak. Flintstones had some, I want some, too.
Why would anyone want a mammoth? Least of all the poor mama Indian elephant?
They're an extint species of a different time. Oh, the ivory... But if that's the only purpose, then there really isn't much purpose except to prove penis prowess (or lack of).
And why would it be so great to have them back? I just don't see why we they are spending so much money to try to bring back a dead animal, is it an ego thing? Do they think the new hybrid can help us out some way? I just don't think we should be treading in this kind of water.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
..in which time some asshole will ruin everybody's fun by cloning a mammoth through some other method.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
"Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years."
50 years of pregnancy? Usually elephants have 2 years (if I'm not mistaking this). So no wonder that mamooths didn't have much kids and were wiped out from that planet.
During my MSc in biology, we had a genetics class in which such a protocol was discussed, mainly because 'jurassic park' just came out.
Basically the professor said that trying to anything like this was like "pushing an analog tape in a CD player and expecting music to come out"
Ontogeny of mammals is really dependent on interactions between mother and child, and these interactions are quite specific for a species.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Actually, 'sabre-toothed tiger' is a bit of a misnomer. You are referring to the Smilodon, which is not closely related to tigers at all.
:)
Sabre teeth were actually a relatively common evolutionary phenomenon during the Cenozoic period, and not only in cats.
Too much to write about. Go read
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
...and Pokemon, Digimon, and the volcano monster that fights Godzilla.
Extremely rich but cracked old dude (Richard Attenborough) decides to make a theme park island with cloned mammoths, re-established by using the DNA of a Siberian mammoth and filling out the rest with that of an Indian Elephant. All of the creatures are created female, but he didn't count on the rare sex-change properties of the Indian Elephant when viewing Sex in the City reruns. The mammoths breed like wildfire, overwhelming the hi-tech pens and security systems during a hurricane, as the fat chief programmer (Wayne Knight) smuggles out a baby mammoth in a tin of shaving cream. Some of the mammoths exhibit unsettlingly high intelligence, hunting as a pack and making musical instruments with their trunks. Luckily a mammoth researcher (Sam Neill) his partner (Laura Dern) and a chaos theorist (Jeff Goldblum) are present and save the day.
but is anybody else wondering what a Mammoth would taste like?
Mmmm - mammoth burgers.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
Why to clone a mammoth?
So you thought those thick glasses and hairy ears would take you out of the gene pool forever? Not true! Now you too can beat mother-nature.
All you have to do is get caught in an avalanche and, a few thousand years from now, scientists will use you to populate a zoo full of half-blind, hairy-eared humans!
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
This sounds like a mammoth job!
They have a real tusk ahead of them!
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Professor Hopes To Clone Mammoth
by
Jolyn Okimoto,
Associated Press Writer
1:07 AM EST; October 2, 1999; Flagstaff, AZ (AP) -- It sounds like a movie plot come to life: A Northern Arizona University Geologist aims to excavate and clone a woolly mammoth from DNA. Larry Agenbroad concedes that cloning the animal is unlikely. Still, he says biologists remain optimistic and he is excited about the project. Agenbroad is part of an international team of scientists whose first task is to cut the cloning candidate -- the likes of which roamed the Earth about two million years ago.
The adult male mammoth, estimated to be about 40 years old when it became frozen, was found by a 9-year-old nomadic reindeer herder in 1997. It's been named Jarkov, after the boy's family. "To feel the skin and touch the flesh of the mammoth will be quite spectacular. It's the closest I've gotten to an animal I've been chasing for more than 30 years," said Agenbroad, sitting in an office crammed full of mammoth bones, teeth, figurines, and paintings.
Agenbroad and scientists from the Netherlands, France and Russia, are removing the ice-encased animal from the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia and airlifting it more than 200 miles to the city of Khatanga. The mammoth will be kept frozen there in an underground tunnel, where scientists will study the 11-foot-tall animal. Besides analyzing dirt, pollen, and even its stomach contents, a primary task is to extract DNA for cloning.
The cloning process involves putting DNA from the mammoth into an Asian elephant's egg that has been stripped of elephant genes. So even though an elephant would give birth, the baby would be a mammoth, not a hybrid, Agenbroad said. "I don't think (the elephant) would know the difference, though she might wonder why her baby is so hairy." Agenbroad said he is not counting on success. "I guess it would be a rarity, but the biologists are quite optimistic," he said.
A medical ethicist at the medical school and the department of philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is among the naysayers. "You need live nuclei and live eggs, plus a host mammoth mother to gestate the fetus. Because none of these are available, 'Jurassic Park' to the contrary, it won't succeed,'' Greg Pence said, referring to the movie in which cloning was used to resurrect dinosaurs.
But scientists at Texas A&M University proved last month that live cells are not needed for cloning. The team successfully cloned a steer from the hide of another that died a year ago. Still, the odds are slim for mammoth cloning, said Hessel Bouma, III, a cell biology expert at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "It would start with DNA not from a fresh cell, but from one haphazardly frozen by nature,'' Bouma said. "The chances of DNA being completely intact is very, very small." But why bring back the mammoth in the first place? "Why not?" asked Agenbroad. "I'd rather have a cloned mammoth than another sheep," he added, referring to Dolly, cloned in 1997 from the udder of a six-year-old ewe. Agenbroad isn't the only one excited about the cloning prospects. "I think it would be a really wonderful thing," said Paul Martin, a retired professor of geosciences and a large mammals expert from the University of Arizona. "It would be a moon shot."
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Unless it has at least 4 asses, I'm not interested...
McDonalds has reportedly changed their motto from "100% Real Beef!" to "100% Real Meat!"..
I meant:
Because we DON'T learn as much from death things as we pretend we do.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
"If impregnating an Indian elephant with mammoth sperm produced young, that offspring would be impregnated with more mammoth sperm and the process repeated in the next generation, producing a creature that was 88 per cent mammoth. The process would take about 50 years."
This is not really cloning, this is similar to producing hybrid dogs by cross-breeding. And this does not really advance research, man has been doing this to crops, livestock and all for so long.
It just seems like researchers with nothing to do. The real step forward would be the Dolly method. That would be cloning.
Infact such a bit is underway in australia. Scientists are planning to clone a tasmaniana Tiger.
Now that would be the perfect push for cloning tech!
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Of course, instead we could just make these things to flash in front of the people and make them shudder in awe of our mighty genetic prowess until they escape our electric fences and hunt us down with their extended middle claw...
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
I do see the point of cloning the mammoth. Being able to study a real, living specimen would be a big deal. On the other hand, breeding a hybrid - a mammophant? Elemoth? - makes precious little sense to me. Taking 50 years to try and create an 88%-pure sort-of-mammoth-but-not-really won't offer science much as the new animal would neither be an elephant or a mammoth. It would be an entirely new, man-made species.
Then again, this is to be done for a Japanese theme park, so why am I surprised? (I live in Tokyo.)
I can't wait for the big scene with the giant mammoth chasing the jeep through a faux jungle.
-purrrr
Those mammoth jokes were both wooly bad.
*sound of moths hitting spotlights*
(thinks) Lucky I kept my day job!
London Times? I guess that its a local paper then? Much like (eg) the Leicester Mercury?
Its 'The Times', if you want to avoid confusion with NY Times then perhaps, 'The Times, England'
(Ok its off topic)
Is this like "pollution credits"? For every extinct species we bring back, do we get to take one out for free?
-- Terry
It is very likely that the mammoth was made extinct by man. For that reason alone I think it would be pretty neat if we could restore them.
This isn't news. Does anybody watch discovery channel.
Does it ever puzzle you to think about some future civilization on earth that discovers your skeleton, extracts your dna and brings you back to life after a million years of peaceful time underground?
I wonder, how could you make sure none of your own dna is preserved after you're done with this living thing? I still hope I have copyright for my blueprints, even after my death. Or another thing, how could you send your dna in a spaceship to distant stars, hoping that the aliens out there can clone you and start a new civilization on a nearby planet, you being the Adam or Eve...
This cloning thing is confusing me... gotta live now and worry later.
Things won't get really interesting until we clone a Neanderthal.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
The part of the body that the Japanese are most keen to get are the testicles. Finding frozen mammoth sperm would provide a significant boost to any cloning exercise...
Nothing better than ole Snuf...
I can already picture a mamoth getting loose and causing all sorts of mayhem in Tokyo ;)
What is the London Times?
If I get one of these, I'll be just like Barney Rubble, but with Jetson toys!!
Sugisaki! Yes my Master
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Did any geek ask , "why copy mp3s man!? but why???"
They just did it!
ok
just do it as nike says, just do it! coz its FUN and different, and progresive, doing nothing is as good as being dead!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The name of the newspaper is just "The Times", not the "London Times". It's the oldest English language newspaper in the world, and other papers added a regional prefix to differentiate themselves from the original Times (e.g., the NY Times, and local papers like the Barnet Borough Times). It's also no longer purely based in London. When I worked there a few years ago, there were three main offices, one in Wapping (London), one in Liverpool and one in Scotland. Each had their own set of journalists and editorial staff, and printing was done at all three sites, plus several others dotted around the country.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Sounds more like jurassic park to me!
Yeah, i like that.
I know a supermarket that has the same optimism.
Spaghettis out of 100% wizen (pure, the italian way).
But how do they include four eggs (20% of the total weight) without creating a paradox?
Tell me, you lvl-0-wizard!
What the hell does that stupid ass crap pot comment that makes no sense get a score of 2:
I think people here make 5 accounts, and self score them selves.
What a joke.
Let me make a score:2 comment:
"Why did I hit comment?"
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I live in London and there's no such publication
Right on! i'm just surprised that it took this long for someone to post that. damn fucktards who comment, but can't think for themselves...
Bronto-burgers!
We used to think only science fiction was coming true, but actually it's a combination of The Jetsons and The Flintstones we're living in, as we slip into Hanna-Barbarism whilst ignoring barbarous relics' true value is constantly being distorted by big-government types. But I digress...a bronto-burger (or dodo-egg omelette, or Galapagos turtle steak!) becomes possible with science, and what they're doing with rats reminds me of Flintstones depictions of birds (as phonograph needles, bullhorns, etc.) and other animals!
the barbarous relic
began sponsoring the mammonth project...
Japanese researchers are planning on cloning a mammoth by impregnating an Indian elephant.
;)
If all the porn I've seen on the net has taught me one thing, its that those Japanese will do anything!!
Why not bring back a species that was extinct due to the actions of mankind like the Dodo bird, rather than something that nature or God extincted, probably for some "valid" reason?
I believe the current thinking is that mammoths were hunted to extinction by men. Mammoths and sabretooth tigers became extinct about 12,000 years ago in North America, which coincides nicely with the arrival of humans on the continent. Hence, by your argument, we should bring them back.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Isn't someone else trying to do a similar thing with the marsupial wolf or something?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
There is only 115 streches of DNA that are known in public databases. Most of these are not that interesting if you want to make a clone. So there is still a long way to go.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Does anyone know what happened to the 'mammoth' Discovery supposedly pulled out of the ice a couple years ago? Was there a mammoth in that block of ice or was there nothing at all? The ice must have been molten by now...
-- Cheers!
Word is that Disney is helping to fund this. They've asked for a special one-off cross breed of a basset hound and the Mammoth.
Look for the release of "Real Life Dumbo" in the year 2053.
Slashdot, meet the slashdotters,
They're all modern stoned groupies
from be-hind the monitor
They're a bunch of washed up geeks
Let's watch, with the others in the hole
Through the, courtesy of Cowboy Neal's pole
When you're here on slashdot
have a wholly trolling good time
a trolling good time
We'll all be gay oh my!
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
I just saw an hour long program on the Discovery Science channel about this, the only exception they had not found a well enough preserved specimen. They also had one about the Mastadon. They were very interesting.
If it won't boot, Fsck it!
I wonder if this attempt is too early to be attempting this for real. There should be experiments for proof of concept before using the actual DNA from the Mamouth.
and I'll reply with a quote...
"If God had intended us to fly, he wouldn't have invented Spanish air traffic control"
-Lister, Red Dwarf, DNA.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
Where would you get the DNA to do this? Did they find a Dodo frozen in Siberia as well? You can't just throw darts at a board to determine what you can attempt this with. You need something to start with.
The last living mammoths have been dated to 4100 years ago on an island offshore Siberia. This a few centuries AFTER the pyramids of Egypt were constructed.
First of all, mammoths lived in the ice age, which means temperatures around 0F. I doubt an 80+% mammoth would survive in today's environments (or then maybe in Siberia).
Second, there is ethics. I thought scientists would be more sensitive on this subject than corporations. Cloning is no game, and while by now we know that we can do it (Dolly), there is no fundamental reason to go further. This is just showing disrespect towards life. Animals are living creatures, and so are we. No more, no less. Life is no playground. We have no rights to play with it.
Mammoths frozen immediately after death are rare gems, as there is a higher chance of their body parts and internal organs being preserved.
:-)
The part of the body that the Japanese are most keen to get are the testicles.
Wow. Why am I not surprised?
...
If I understand the situation. 1. People can get free acess, or 2. People can pay Starbucks $29 a month. If they both exist, why do you think people will pay $29 for what they can get for free? Let Starbucks go broke.
Gor-Gor comes and you must die
Swats F-16s from the sky
Admit you crave the gift he brings you
Fall worship tyrant king, you Gor-Gor!
"It is thought that as many as ten million mammoths are buried in the Siberian permafrost. This is shallow in many areas, but because Siberia is so sparsely populated, it is thought that mammoth remains may go unearthed for hundreds of years in more impassable areas."
So they're expecting to unearth at least 10,000,000/500 = 20,000 mammoths a year for the next few hundred years?
Wow. What are they going to do with them all?
Someone has told us that they are attracted to you! They said:
* That you are sensitive
* They think you are "cute"
* You have really big tusks
* That they would like to spend more time with you
To find out who this person is, all you have to do is be re-animated from extinction!
As a result we are making you a one-time offer, if you reply to this email within 50 years, to be re-born into the 21st Century! Our scientists are standing by with a rack of test tubes and a willing elephant Mom, just waiting to make your re-emergence a reality!
Just think, you could:
* Experience the wonders of modern technology
* Travel the world
* Procreate with other artificially un-extinct creatures (or your close genetic relatives if you prefer)
* Go on a rampage and destroy Tokyo
What are you waiting for? Call now!
use constant PERL_IS_BROKEN => $] >= 5.006;
Clone Ice Man. He might know about the Mammoth.
Why clone the wooly mammoth? Because we can. Why clone a sheep (Dolly)? Because we can. Why split an atom? Because we can. Why go to the moon? Because we can.
Why have more than 640K of RAM? Because we can.
Anytime something is acheivable through our technology we strive to obtain it. It just something that we - as humans - do.
___________________________
I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.
"Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years"
Considering that apes, baboons and the like are closer than this to humans (something like over 90% I believe?), will this just be an echo from the past? Meaning the remaining 12% might make such a huge difference that the creation would be more like a new species than a reincarnation.
Recently the remains of a Bison were found in a Colorado glacier. They are only 200 to 400 years old, and might be a good way to practice restoration cloning. The DNA is "fresher" and could be used to impregnate a much closer relative (genetically) of the original beast. What better way to learn to do this to older samples?
E 80 7802,00.html?search=filter
www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257
(No direct link, see the middle of the page)
Most of the arguments against the human-driven extinction of the mammoths are based upon population sizes and the difficulty of taking down a mammoth for primitive humans.
What most academics arent considering is that when humans gain access to an easy supply of food, such as mammoth meat, population sizes will spike nicely to take advantage of the resource. Since the mammoths would become increasingly scarce as they were overhunted, the human population of mammoth hunters would also decline. After the last mammoth was eaten, the survivors would switch to other large game. Such a brief spike in human population size would not leave an overwhelming fossil record, because the time involved is so short.
As for how hard mammoths were to take down: its best not to underestimate humans ability to kill things, for fairly obvious reasons. Some academics are quick to belittle the capabilities of earlier humans, probably stemming from their isolation and distance from field survival situations.
Its sad that we as a species continue this trend even to this day. Whales are continuing to decline. Its morose when environmentalist try to push beached whales back into the water: they generally beach themselves due to poisoning or internal injuries casued by human actions and byproducts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... for the next ice age.
(nil)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Global warming, chemical, noise, and petroleum poisoning of the worlds oceans are a larger long-term concerns than whaling. Habitat destruction is also a major factor.
Japanese whaling is on a decline, moreso to economic issues than political. The current level of external pressure, combined with the abating of japanese propensity for whale-meat consumption (it is mostly older japanese who eat whale) is likely sufficient to put and end to commercial whaling.
It appears that the Japanese scientists involved want to clone up a mammoth for an "Ice Age wildlife park" in northeastern Siberia. If so, they're going to have more problems than just creating a mammoth.
Siberia and unglaciated Alaska may have had a very different ecosystem way back then, if what paleontologists like R. Dale Guthrie have claimed is correct. The climate was colder but dryer, with a "mammoth steppe" that was more like the American West than modern-day tundra and coniferous forest, with more grass and shrubs. (Read Guthrie's Frozen Fauna: The Story of Blue Babe for details.) That's the only way it could have supported those spectacular large animals.
I wish the article had more information on the proposed park and exactly what's going on. If they don't have any way of changing the local ecosystem back to mammoth steppe, they're going to have to feed the animals artificially, making it more like a zoo than a wildlife preserve.
Yet, according to the article, they've already gone ahead and imported musk oxen and several hundred wild horses and are negotiating with Canada to buy bison.
Like Sarah Michelle Gellar?
Except behaviour in mammals is largely learned. With an Indian elephant for a surrogate mother, this 88% mammoth is going to grow up thinking it's an elephant, albeit hairier than other elephants, and will behave accordingly.
--
E_NOSIG
The thing about mammoths is that they eat way too much food just like those damn whales. That means the Japanese will have to kill and eat them just to save the rest of the environment!!
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
It was not kind of you to give such a spoiler about the next episode !
theefer
Elephants are intelligent animals. Social creatures with family values. When this mom gives birth, she's going to have serious mental problems because she won't know what happened. It would be like a human giving birth to an alien, and then expecting her to be just fine afterwards.
Perhaps we should save the animals we have?
No, there is not enough detail. Despite the Slashdot headline, there is no link to a HowTo.
And will they genetically engineer it to be able to talk?
not breeding - didn't they find some hair samples in a cave in southern argentina? I popped over to the discovery channel website and noted this small tidbit indicating that dna has been recovered -- but naturally, there are skeptics.
For more info on that tasmanian wolf, take a look at Thylacine info here.
Anything you say will be held against you.
Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years.
And I thought elephants had a long gestation period (22 months)!
I thought I had seen this before, but last time tasmainian tigers were the target species. The difference in my opinion is that the tasmainian tigers demise was a direct result of (pay close attention here) modern human activity, the mammoth was a similar situation, but the extinction of the mammoth was caused by prehistoric humans. Point being is that the methods used to hunt the tigers included rifles, shotguns, snares, dead-falls, etc. The only known method of hunting the mammoth was spears, this fact combined with the lack of habitat for this species really brings into question as to whether or not this is a good idea that should be done. In the case of the tiger I say go for it, but for crying out loud, leave the damn mammoth be.
I assume that this project is simply a proof of concept; a project to generate one freak animal that would die, and the species would be extinct again.But what if it weren't?
What possible place in the world would this species have? If we're truly talking about "bringing back" a species, we have to talk about releasing it into the environment.
Now the environment has long since shaken out to equilibrium from the lack of mammoths, so introducing mammoths must necessarily take it out of equilibrium. Does anyone really thing we have any shot of predicting the impact?
Let's say we generate a genetically viable population of 100 mammoths and release them into the wastes of Siberia. What if it is simply so that the conditions that led to their demise are still in effect?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Does anyone remember a tiny article in like equinox or something from the early 90's where these scientists found part or all of a perfectly preserved mammoth with like...some meat on it...and they like ate it...
I remember being fairly upset about this, but then I was like 12 at the time and I mighta dreamt that I read it.
I have weird dreams like that.
oh shut up, you know you have them too.
-binky.
What's all this we business? Is someone taking your money to do this?
Face it buddy, not everything in the world is done to your whim. If somebody else wants to spend their money on this, it none of your business.
Infuriate left and right
Very carefully.
[Mammoths] inhabited Europe, Northern Asia and Northern America and became extinct about 10,000 years ago.
Next time you're in LA, check out the La Brea tar pits museum. It's quite amazing to learn about dozens of species that became extinct only 10,000 years ago (which is diddly squat on geologic time scales).
Best example: the American Lion, much larger than any lion you can currently find in Africa. Some weird camels also recently roamed in California. So many skeletons of the fearsome Dire Wolf were pulled from the pits, that the museum's designers were able to cover one wall of the museum with 400 of their skulls -- and still have plenty left over for research!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The DNA of a human and a mouse
differs only by 15 percent. This mammoth they intend to breed differs from
an actual mammoth by 12 percent. So, this "mammoth" they intend to breed it as
genetically mammoth as Stewart Little is human.
the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth
This will be interesting. Last I heard, humans were 98% chimpanzee.
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
This mammoth will be 88% pure mammoth at the end of the 50 year process, not have an 88% genetic similarity to the mammoth.
Think of it like this.. Dad is 100% Irish and mom is 100% Polish. Child is 50%/50% right? Now Child mates with someone 100% Irish.. Their child is now 75%Irish/25%Polish.. see the relation here.. That's where the 88% figure is coming from. Several iterations of the above..
Genetic similarity between Indian Elephant and Mammoth is most likely in the very high 90th percentile. Even chimps and humans are ~98% genetically similar with one another..
Think!
Your friendly AC
Have some immagination dude.
Sure, it advances science. But damn, sombody is going to be rolling in fame and fortune. First, I'm sure the process is patented 5 ways to Sunday. Second, you can regulate the rarity of these animals... Zoos, museums and other attractions would pay huge for this sort of thing. Yeah, they're in it for the science, but being famous for creating the first prehistoric animal and making bank on top of it can't be a bad incentive either...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
"The part of the body that the Japanese are most keen to get are the testicles."
...for their Rocky Mountain Oyster Rolls.
... it is thought that mammoth remains may go unearthed for hundreds of years ...- They inhabited Europe, Northern Asia and Northern America and became extinct about 10,000 years ago.
I realize that the first time reference was relttive to the present, but it took me a second.1) Some have claimed that parent/child relationships will be different enough between mammoths and elephants to mess up the mammoth baby. Note that mammoths and elephants are in the same family, but differ in genus. This is a very close kinship, and the two animals have very similar behavior and appearance. I doubt there'll be a problem -- but we have no way to tell if the mammoth "comes out wrong". 2) Even if a true clone is possible, the state-of-the-art technique won't result in a true 100% mammoth. Assuming they insert a mammoth somatic cell nucleus into an elephant ovum, the resulting creature will have an elephant's ribosomal DNA. Probably not a big deal, but who knows? You can only get real, 100% mammoth if you find a viable mammoth ovum. Pretty unlikely!
Don't they keep harping on the fact that a chimpanzee is something very close to 100% human, with only a tiny percentage of difference in the genome? How close to authentic can you get with 88% of the genome intact?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I want a Pikachu pet. Can someone bio-genetically engineer that for me. I'll pay big bucks for it.
but it's a story at least a year old! c'mon guys!
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
I hope they don't mean only 88% of the genes will match. This would tell us nothing.
Bearing in mind that, genetically speaking, humans are 50% pure banana, is there really any chance that whatever comes out will resemble an actual mammoth?
Maybe just a furry elephant.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
And to think I used to think that Jurrasic Park was totally unbelievable...
Shame on me.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
I am all for scientific progress in replacement cloning, but the mammoth went extinct for a reason. Mankind is so keen on playing insert diety of choice here that they dont think that maybe, just maybe these critters are dead for a reason, this puts evolution back a good couple million years. Darwin was part right, the weak cannot pass their genes off and die, the strong survive, and the damn monkeys give the weak a second chance to prove their worth.
Beware the fury of a patient man
- John Dryden
Um, didn't any of them see Jurassic Park 1, 2, and 3?
;)
"Of course, I would only call it a "success" if 2 cloned mammoths were able to successfully mate."
For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the mammoths would agree with you...
-- Terry
What hubris to say that we've evolved to the point that we're separate from Nature.
We ARE a component of Nature, just like an oak tree, the spotted owl, or a dead mammoth -- with or without rifles, snares, etc.
Therefore, an argument claiming that it is more legitimate to revive species killed off by less evolved humans is ludicrous.
We're an element of the ecosystem just like the amoeba that has eaten the original poster's brain is. Sometimes humans are as virulent as the amoeba, but whatever the case, and due to whatever means, we can't deny our ties to the earth and the fact that we're simply one piece of the jigsaw, just like the mammoth.
To think that we hold the Earth's fate in our hands is hyperbolic. On the other hand, it's completely legitimate to say that we hold our own fate in our hands, and (to a progressively lesser extent) the fate of the generations that follow us.
Don't know about you, but I get so tired of this crap about us being exceptional, donminating over Nature, controlling her fate... especially when the very act of thinking and expressing this opinion puts one closer to the animals the person is trying to segregate themselves from.
Sure they are domesticated. Indian Elephants were used as beasts of burden up until very recently. And what about Hannibal Barca?
No, I have never done any big game hunting. Have you?
But stone age hunters won't be worrying about being sporting.
Stampeding the herd with a grass fire might let them single out the weaker or younger individuals. Or perhaps they could stampede them over a cliff. Native Americans did precisely this, prior to the introduction of the horse back to North America.
Now the way I read that I'm saying just the opposite that you have interpreted it to be. Rather I think it is less legitimate to revive species killed off by less evolved humans. I do feel that humans in their current state do have many "unfair" advantages over less evolved species, I am not one to beleve in creationism and I definately think that humans are simply highly evolved animals, but due to our advantages that were carelessly used to wipe entire species from the face of the planet, we should feel somewhat responsible (we are responsible, directly so) and try to correct the mistakes our forefathers have made. The earth is only made richer by the preservation of species, and there is no possible argument to the contrary.
I believe the current thinking [bagheera.com] is that mammoths were hunted to extinction by men. Mammoths and sabretooth tigers became extinct about 12,000 years ago in North America, which coincides nicely with the arrival of humans on the continent. Hence, by your argument, we should bring them back.
That's just a theory of why mammoths are extinct, nobody knows for sure. If I recall, the DNA they are using are from mammoths that were frozen in northern Russia. The evidence is that they were frozen in a cataclysmic event, because some of them still had food in their mouths.
Also, nobody knows the environmental impact of bringing back creatures that have been dead for so long. Has nature adapted and moved on after a dozen millenia? Would the resurrection of a long-extinct species do more harm than good?
Just some thoughts...
Wouldn't they be better off saving the endangered elephant species that are still alive and in the process of being wiped out by man
I found a link to an online book entitled "Biodiversity and Conservation: A Hypertext Book" by Peter J. Bryant. Here is a link to the chapter devoted to captive breeding and reintroduction. About halfway through this very interesting chapter Bryant addresses the woolly mammoth reintroduction.
African elephants and Mammoths are more closely related than either is to the Indian elephant.
A zoo experimented by crossing an Indian and an African elephant. The hybrid calf died. Bryant pointed out that a Elephant-Mammoth hybrid would probably be sterile, like a mule.