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Extinct Mammoth, Coming To a Zoo Near You
Techmeology writes "Professor Akira Iritani of Kyoto University plans to use recent developments in cloning technology to give life to the currently extinct woolly mammoth. Although earlier efforts in the 1990s were unsuccessful due to damage caused by extreme cold, Professor Iritani believes he can use a technique pioneered by Dr Wakayama (who successfully cloned a frozen mouse) to overcome this obstacle. This technique will enable Professor Iritani to identify viable cell nuclei, and transfer them to egg cells of an African elephant which will carry the mammoth for a 600 day pregnancy."
Pleistocene park, coming soon to a zoo near you. Doesn't quite have the same ring as "Jurassic" though.
Still I am willing to bet that this creature, if created, will be called "Manny", after our Ice Age mammoth movie star... any takers?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
before the hundreds of comments saying that this is wrong and shouldnt happen show up... dont bother.... lighten up and have a drink
portfolio
I recall the time they found those fossilized mosquitoes and before long they
were cloning DNA
Now I'm being chased by some irate velociraptors
Well believe me...This has been one lousy day
Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
Someone shut the fence off in the rain
I admit it's kind of eerie
But this proves my chaos theory
And I don't think I'll be coming back again
Oh no
I cannot approve of this attraction
'Cause getting disemboweled always makes me kind of mad
A huge Tyrannosaurus ate our lawyer
Well I suppose that proves...they're really not all bad
Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
Someone let T. Rex out of his pen
I'm afraid those things will harm me
'Cause they sure don't act like Barney
And they think that I'm they're dinner not their friend
Oh no
Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
What a crummy weekend this has been
Well this sure ain't no E-ticket
Think I'll tell 'em where to stick it
'Cause I'm never coming back this way again
Oh no...Oh no
I raised my arms and said "YES!" but then I had doubts that it is going to happen anytime soon.
I can do without the giant sloth, short nosed bear, dire wolves or the saber tooth tigers.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If you thought the story about Enumclaw Man (Kenneth Pinyan) was terrifying, just wait until guys like that get hold of some prehistoric cloned mammals. Eew.
So who will be the lucky lady to carry for the first Neandertal born in 25,000 years?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Okay, time to be pedantic. And while the good professor is at it, why not breed some Neanderthals, sabre-toothed cats, or my personal favorite, the hugest of the post-Dinotopian behemoths, the Indricotherium?
'Cause they might be yummy!
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
I just hope it doesn't taste like chicken. I'm imagining something along the line of moose, only older and freezer burnt.
Excellent. I could use a baby mammoth to help with the dishes.
Eh...It's a living.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Know what would be cool? Create a new park in northern Canada and release some mammoths there.
They would, of course, need enough forage. But once they begin to thrive, bring back sabor tooth tigers to control the mammoth population.
It would beat polar bear watching in Churchill all to hell.
If my theory is right and there is an ingredient in Mammoth meat that makes our species sane!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Soon we will be able to put our heads in cryofreeze and become slow time travelers to the future.
Two all mammoth patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
There's been a strong belief for a long time that we were responsible for the extinction of Mammoths. We definitely killed off many species like Dodos but we may have killed off most of the megafauna near the end of the last ice age so we may be able to undo some of the damage we have done. Outside of the cool factor there is a legitimate argument to be made for bringing them back.
Does this mean we'll start seeing pink mammoths too?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In all probability, the mammoths were really stupid, but very tasty.
We almost wiped out their cousins, the Buffalo, too. Ever had a Bison burger? Tasty!
We finally figured out that the third cousin of Mr. Mammoth, the cow, needed to be conserved and grown en mass.
So, McWooly's should have been available by now. At least we have something to look forward to if the cloning works!
I find it quite interesting that this story comes straight after one that refers to insects and Jurassic Park.
Coincidence, I think not.
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Isn't this going to destroy our perception of the phrase, "Mammoth tits?"
It's not like most large mammals are just that mammal and nothing else. We have gut bacteria and any other number of symbiotic entities living within us. We also get part of our immune system from breast milk (I assume this is the case for most mammals and not just humans). I wonder how they have addressed these issues.
lighten up and have a drink
What do you suggest, with a lightly braised mammoth steak? A Montepulciano? Aperole with champagne before the meal? And a good calvados afterwards? I am looking forward to seeing mammoth on the menu in my local restaurants!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
once the mammoth is revived, how do we keep Sarah Palin from shooting it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is what we in the REAL world like to call a 'bad idea'.
Didn't anyone see Jurassic Park?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
So who will be the lucky lady to carry for the first Neandertal born in 25,000 years?
Actually sounds like a good idea for a reality show, when Charlie Sheen gets whored out . . . two and a half Neanderthals!
But, I guess, most women folk already have experience with living with Neanderthals.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I can't help but wonder if an african elephant will be capable of giving birth to a mammoth. How big are mammoth offspring relative to those of african elephants? Will they have to perform a C-section or somesuch? If they manage to pull it off though... awesome.
Right on time for the new Ice Age. We're gonna need these guys to provide meat on the hoof during the coming cold spell.
Who knows maybe Mammoths are really tasty?
How can this be anything but awesome? Soon they will bring back the T-Rex, I will be able to outfit it with a missile and laser platform and then I will change my name to Krulos and conquer the world.
It would be like a baboon giving surrogate birth to a chimpanzee. Their gene pools are different enough to prevent gestation, even using an elephant ovum to contain the mammoth's DNA to allow mitochondrial DNA compatibility.
They're not going to sneak aboard a cargo ship without being noticed, and then go hide in the wild somewhere and reproduce like rabbits.
Good grief, Hollywood execs are looking for plots anywhere they can find them. Now you've given them the plot to Cenozoic Park!
Modern cloning techniques don't have a fantastic success rate (~10% last time I checked; 30% from TFA). Even then, there doesn't seem to be an excess of surrogate mothers (African elephants, in this case.) Even harvesting the necessary eggs from the African elephants is tricky -- it's an invasive procedure, and operating on something the size of the elephant is no easy task.
Even assuming that all goes well, cloned animals are known to suffer from compromised immune function and generally short lifespans. Many of these problems are an effect of the cloning process and any offspring will not suffer the effects (as we've seen with some sheep). However, given the size of the Mammoth, I can imagine it taking no less than a decade to reach sexual maturity (as with African elephants). Even then, to avoid some of the detrimental effects of the cloning process, you'd also need a Mammoth of the opposite sex...
In short: While it's cool and technically in the realm of possibility, there are still a tremendous number of sizable hurdles in the way.
Wir müssen wissen.
Wir werden wissen.
It's going to be done, because we're human beings, and that's what we do. Deal with it, and get over it. And pass the steak sauce.
The major thing that comes to mind is that were bringing a creature back when it's native diseases now have 100k+ years of evolution on them. They'll have to keep it in a bubble.
Then again it seems a dwarf species existed until around 1700BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth
Just go downtown and have a look around. Neandertals are not extinct at all...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Its okay. If elephants get wiped out we can wait a few centuries and then implant elephant embryos into mammoth's so they can get their revenge.
Please, please, pretty please, with a lychee on top, can you also create a female mammoth and a Scrat so we get a full Ice Age sequel?
They should only do it if they can modify it so it has extra legs and glows fluorescent green in the dark!
You don't know how cloning works do you? They're cloning a mammoth, not the bacteria they found in a frozen mammoth.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
It might avoid the 10,375 people coming in here and replying with OH MY GOD DID YOU SEE JURASSIC PARK, anyway. Yes, internet. I am fairly certain that a few people did see that movie.
nice article...i love it....\ lovely internet talk http://haffow.com/
Unless they keep it in an hermetically sealed tent it'll be dead to one of the common disease it has no immunity to within weeks if not days.
Stupidest idea ever.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
You do realise Jurassic Park was fiction, not a documentary right?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Because there are abundance of diseases in genes which spread outside the host?
The Japanese are rapidly going through the earths supply of whale meat. I guess they just want something to replace that by the time whales are extinct.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Geez, people are already highly allergic to the hairs of some caterpillars. Tiny catterpillars that turn into flying animals that are hard to control. This is a big elephant. If it is a problem, we eat it. We did it before, we can do it again.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Neanderthals are believed to have had larger brains and better tools than our contemporary ancestors. You do them a great disservice, sir, by comparing them to the worst of our existing population.
What about naming the first one born Aloysius Snuffleupagus?
http://www.sesamestreet.org/onair/characters/snuffy
This could be a real space saving measure. No need to keep a viable population of every species. Just a few breeding pairs and enough genetic stock in the freezer to ensure diversity should we ever want a population of the animal around again. And we don't need to keep every species around either, just the ones compatible enough to breed the rest.
What bacteria will come from this animal that haven't been around since they are extinct?
Dude, the spontaneous creation theory for life went out of fashion around the time of Pasteur. The only bacteria this mammoth will possess are ones that are present in our world today. While the mammoth's own micro-environment will no doubt favor the growth of certain specific bacteria as part of its normal flora, it will be no more dangerous than turtles and chickens which carry Salmonella sp (responsible for typhoid, amongst other things), or armadillos which carry Yersenia pestis (responsible for bubonic plague aka black death).
While having your back scratched regularly by an armadillo is not a good idea, the presence of the pathogen in the environment does not automatically mean epidemics. There are a couple cases of bubonic plague even in US every year, FYI.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Mmmmm mammoth steaks...
When he does it it will be news. Not before. At the moment it is just fantasy.
Those commenters who come with remarks suggesting the creation of a Pleistocene Park: in order to do so, you not only have to bring back some of the animals (such as mammoth in this case), but also the ecosystem/biotope in which they lived. And there's a snag: that ecosystem is extinct as well.
There is no place on earth today, not in the arctic either, which has the ecosystem/biotope corresponding to the Late Pleistocene "Mammoth Steppe". Our Holocene cold steppes and tundras are decidedly different in plant biomass and ecological structure.
In fact, that (and not human hunting) is likely why mammoths and whooly rhino, as well as a number of other Pleistocene animals that roamed the Mammoth Steppe, became extinct. Their biotope got extinct.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
Restore something closer to current animals, but in the same lineage
as your target, repeat as required getting closer to the target. Hey, it's
a thought!
... but what about microbiology?
I guess one of 3 things could happen:
Apple built a platform for their ideas, Google built one for everyone's.
Oh my God. Do you know what this is? This is a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs are breeding.
I guess many people underestimate the dependency on living relatives. Most mammal species depend heavily on the mother; she has to transmit certain bacteria to "start the digestion engine". Often the baby will be infected during birth or will eat the feces of the mother shortly after being born. And think about the milk and the immune system.
Thus even if the scientist manage to reproduce Mammoth babies chances are it will die within hours. Maybe the elephant mother's microbacterial flora will suffice but I doubt it.
This is the reason IMHO we will never see any living dinosaurs from ancient mosquito blood, because the ecological systems that allowed dinosaurs to live don't exist anymore and will possibly never come into existance again. It's not just a matter of getting a DNA into a living creature. It's about recreating the microbiological enviroment from scratch and maybe the whole ecological pyramid on top of that before a Velociraptor baby will even begin to eat.
(Sorry about my english)
A little disappointed to see that it's just some guy who wants to try, rather than someone having successfully navigated the damaged tissue hurdles.
Jurassic Park was the only book I threw in the trash can immediately after reading. It was nothing but a long, boring, anti-science rant.
Michael Crichton somehow got a notion of the mathematical theory of chaos in non-linear systems and assumed chaos is everything, therefore science can never get reliable results.
That's the fossilized DNA of Frankenstein that Crichton injected in a 20th century disaster film cell. The combination of two pieces of shit will never smell like roses.
Since the reduction in ice is making it difficult for polar bears to hunt seals.
I'm not in animal rights or whatever, but this reminds me of star trek episode where the picard is data's lawyer.
The science behind this will probably be/is great, and people should probably master it, but I see people discussing this as these things would serve as an entertainment for us, and no one mentioned is it moral/ethical to bio-engineer extinct species so we can put it in zoo and take our kids to see it.
After all, if this succeeds, those mammoths will be living things.
I was just wondering.
actually, the DNA may contain viral information. i dont think that such data can result in the formation of viable viral agents, but still, this is messing with the unknown, i hope they think this out.
Remember that great "The Way Things Work" book with all the nice illustrations and cute wooly mammoths?
Live-action TV series.
Yay! Once we have mammoths, we can begin miniatuising them through selective breeding
Unfortunately, the 600 day gestation means I won't get a Mimmoth or Zorgophant much before my 200th birthday =-(
I've considered the demise of these critters, and though there is evidence that climate change was part of the problem for them, it does appear that human hunting also played a large role. Now, that's the part I find most interesting, if you were a primitive hunter, why would you go after something that could easily squash you like the proverbial bug??? Only one decent answer to this puzzle; they must have tasted GREAT!! Who want's to join my investors for the First American Mammoth Burgers and Bar???
"The lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me." - Dr. Ian Malcolm