Photo credit: Jonathan Bean
Soon — perhaps as early as 2019 — we will see the creation of the first woolly mammoth in almost 4,000 years.
At least that’s what a team of Harvard researchers is hoping. If everything goes to plan, they will pull off the “de-extinction” using an artificial womb and an embryo engineered by splicing mammoth genes (preserved in the Siberian ice) into the DNA of an Asian elephant. If it works, and they eventually succeed in bringing an embryo to term, the resulting creature will have the small ears, subcutaneous fat, long shaggy hair, and cold-adapted blood of the long-vanished mammoth.
I have been thinking a lot about woolly mammoths for a while now...