I love the elephants. I’ve talked about them repeatedly here.
So it is no surprise to me that I would also love the wooly mammoths. I’m part Neanderthal, after all.
Seriously. I bet the wooly mammoths were every bit as intuitive and intelligent as the modern-day elephants. It just seems right.
But sadly, they disappeared from the face of the Earth some 4,000 years ago.
There are a number of theories about why mammoths became extinct. It’s possible that early humans may have overhunted them. That could have been part of it, at least. However, scientists believe other factors were involved.
As Earth warmed, those great icy glaciers melted, and sea levels began to rise. And with that, there is evidence that groups of woolly mammoths drowned due to local flooding. Those are called “regional extinction events.”
But more than anything, the warming of the Earth also affected the type of plants that mammoths ate. Grasslands vanished where mighty mammoths once ate the bulk of their food.
For whatever reason, they are gone.
I’ve mentioned this some time ago, but scientists were knocking the idea around of bringing them back to life through DNA replication and genetic engineering. Well folks. It seems that a bold plan to recreate a version of the woolly mammoth, is making some big progress, according to the scientists involved.
They are saying that the long-term goal is to create a living, walking elephant-mammoth hybrid that would be visually indistinguishable from the good old extinct Wooly. They are also saying that if it is released into its natural habitat (in large numbers) that it could potentially help restore the fragile Arctic tundra ecosystem.
I won’t go into all the details about how they are doing this in the lab. Asian elephant womb here. Embryonic cells over there. Stem cell here. Petri dish there. Blah. Blah.
But the guy resurrecting the extinct species is Harvard University geneticist George Church. It has been a “pet project” of his for years. The research team has already analyzed the genomes of 53 woolly mammoths from ancient DNA recovered from fossils.
These scientists have longed claimed that mammoths, should they return to the grasslands in the planet’s northernmost reaches in sufficient numbers, would help slow down permafrost thaw. They believe that, before their extinction, grazing animals such as mammoths, horses and bison kept the EarthEarth frozen underneath by tramping down the grass, knocking down trees and compacting snow.
However, other expert scientists have said it’s hard to imagine herds of cold-adapted elephants making a significant impact on a region that’s warming faster than anywhere else in the world.
Okay. A couple of things here. Not all scientists are on board with this idea. I’m in their camp.
First of all, I’ve seen Jurassic Park. We know what happened when they resurrected dinosaurs. Bad dinosaurs. Something got scrambled somewhere along the line in those petri dishes.
Secondly, the guy that is rallying this project together is named “Church.” And we might need a church if these Wooly Mammoths are resurrected and go ape.
Just like burning the sulfur in the high school chemistry lab to make the school stink was a bad idea, so is this.
Wooly Mammoths Gone Wild.
Wooly Mammoths Storm New York City.
Wooly Mammoths Overtake San Diego Zoo.
These could be the headlines.
Maybe they should start by bringing something back that’s a little smaller. Like the Passenger Pigeon.
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“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.” – Jules Verne
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“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” – Isaac Asimov
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“The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” – Sir William Bragg
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The reboot of the Wooly Mammoth. Oh boy.
