14-billion-years-later:Mammoths V2.0Finally! Okay so I’ve grown up hearing about the possibility o
14-billion-years-later: Mammoths V2.0Finally! Okay so I’ve grown up hearing about the possibility of cloning mammoths so this is exciting news. Two teams in Japan and Russia have finally taken the plunge and decided to attempt to clone a mammoth using an elephant egg injected with mammoth DNA. One of the major problems with cloning mammoths is finding the DNA (that isn’t to say it is the only problem), but thankfully we may now have some from the thigh bone of a dead mammoth found in Siberia. The teams are projected to have a baby mammoth by 2017, the first in nearly 10,000 years. Still let’s not get our hopes up, it’s a long way yet and certainly a difficult challenge. I think the ethics of cloning a mammoth are a bit questionable. I mean, if mammoths are like modern elephants, then they are pretty intelligent, and this little one is probably going to feel pretty different and alone, even if it is raised by elephant parents. Scientifically, it would be really fascinating, but do we really want to create an animal like that that will have no real connexion to the world around it? -- source link