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43,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Remains Offer Strong Chance of Cloning
EwanPalmer sends a followup to a story from last year about a team of Siberian scientists who recovered an ancient wooly mammoth carcass. It was originally believed to be about 10,000 years old, but subsequent tests showed the animal died over 43,000 years ago. The scientists have been surprised by how well preserved the soft tissues were. They say it's in better shape than a human body buried for six months. "The tissue cut clearly shows blood vessels with strong walls. Inside the vessels there is haemolysed blood, where for the first time we have found erythrocytes. Muscle and adipose tissues are well preserved." The mammoth's intestines contain vegetation from its last meal, and they have the liver as well. The scientists are optimistic that they'll be able to find high quality DNA from the mammoth, and perhaps even living cells. They now say there's a "high chance" that data would allow them to clone the mammoth.
For mammoth burgers.
I suppose the idea of cloning a 43,000-year-old mammoth would be the kind of thing that would attract funding, but from a purely scientific standpoint, wouldn't you start out small and try to clone, say, a dead chicken first, just to see if the process actually worked?
We already know cloning works. Welcome to the 1990s. Sorry about your internet connection.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is no point in cloning a chicken. We already _know_ what chicken tastes like.
Hot pan, salt, pepper, enquiring minds want to know.
[FUCK BETA]
It's not like it's going to run off into the forest and sprout more.
I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.
What does your mom have to do with this?
Mammoths don't travel at 500+ mph. Planes don't leave footprints or take great, big dumps on the ground to announce where they've been. Now, if they create a mammoth that can travel at 500 mph across water, I concede that yes, we may lose track of it.