By Staff Writer: Jerri Clewis
When it comes to gigantic animals that once dominated the planet, mammoths are some of the most iconic to have ever existed. Their massive tusks and wooly bodies have made them famous in our media, even though they’ve been extinct for a few thousand years.
But that might change soon.
For several years, researchers have been trying to recreate a wooly mammoth by utilizing DNA fragments collected from well-preserved and frozen carcasses found in the animals’ old stomping grounds, according to a report from the Washington Post. A little bit like Jurassic Park and “dino DNA” collected from mosquitoes trapped in amber.
In 2015, scientists sequenced the animal’s genetic blueprint just enough to provide a roadmap for recreating a living mammoth, but there wasn’t much information on the genes themselves. But Colossal Biosciences, a de-extinction company, announced they had successfully derived cells from Asian elephants that researchers can reprogram to give rise to any cell type in the body, Live Science reported on March 6.
Researchers could use the cells to engineer mammoth DNA and tissue samples capable of teaching us more about the extinct species’ biology—the cellular and genetic processes behind the animal’s iconic appearance.
The discovery also opens a way to create elephant sperm and egg cells, which means such cells won’t need to be harvested from the already dwindling number of living Asian elephants. With luck, those sperm and egg cells will allow for in vitro fertilization and eventually surrogacy, leading to a modern elephant carrying a developing wooly mammoth for a 22-month gestation period, Live Science reported.
If all goes well, wooly mammoths might make a comeback, although they won’t quite be the ones we’ve seen in museums or the media. The resulting creation will be more like a wooly mammoth-elephant hybrid or a wooly elephant capable of surviving the cold.
But why exactly do scientists want so badly to bring back the wooly mammoth after it has been extinct for so long?
The short answer is climate change.
The arctic tundra is home to permafrost consisting of dead plant life, animals and microbes that have been locked away by the cold temperatures, and those stores of decaying matter are estimated to hold twice as much carbon as what is currently in the atmosphere, according to NOAA In the Arctic. Scientists worry permafrost thaw could exacerbate global climate change and contribute to rising temperatures.
In the past, mammoths were a keystone species that helped keep the permafrost intact by reducing trees and large plant life, both of which absorb more heat than grass, in one of Earth’s largest biomes, the “mammoth steppe” that stretched over much of the globe. After mammoths went extinct, the mammoth steppe disappeared, and the permafrost has since come under risk due to rising temperatures. Resurrecting mammoths could help to reverse the damage more widely and effectively in areas where human intervention is less possible.
If scientists successfully create a mammoth-elephant hybrid, researchers will hopefully deliver the first to Pleistocene Park, an experiment in the Siberian Arctic that began in 1996 to study the effects of native species on the environment and whether they can slow or reverse permafrost thaw, according to the park’s website. The new mammoth-elephant hybrid would then roam the park with the other participating species: bison, musk ox, moose, yaks, reindeer and more.