52,000-year-old woolly mammoth chromosomes reconstructed from 'jerky-like' skin

[lmpdev]

I personally think successfully resurrecting the Thylacine and reintroducing it longterm to Tasmania would be a better aim over all these comments on Mammoth cloning

Advantages: - smaller (but still a macro-sized animal) - multiple surrogate options rather than just African Elephants - the ecosystem would be better with its capstone apex predator back - it only died out so recently that it has footage from zoos

[VladimirGolovin]

Unlike the elephant / mammoth pairing, there aren't any marsupials similar to Thylacine (as far as I know). What surrogate options did you have in mind?

[Qem]

Is ti possible to do this for the giant ground sloth too, or there is no well preserved DNA sample for it so far?

[lofaszvanitt]

So it would run amok and climb a skyscraper?

[29athrowaway]

It would die immediately due to global warming, or it would be killed for its horns by traditional medicine maniacs. But could be a good source of textiles and perhaps protein. It was a source of protein back in ita day.

[fauria]

Would it be possible, with today's technology, to clone a woolly mammoth?

[johncessna]

They're actively trying:

https://colossal.com/mammoth/

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a42708517/s...

[cmrdporcupine]

I'm more interested in mastodons, their smaller, temperate climate cousins. Fits better with our warmer world. And so cute.

They used to range across this whole (North American) continent. I just giggle at thinking the havoc they'd cause let loose in northeastern forests again.

[ourmandave]

The caps are melting and some people are all in on bringing back the woolly mammoth.

How about the woolly rhino while we're at it? Maybe open a zoo in Death Valley to house 'em.

[saalweachter]

The correlation coefficient between # mammoths and ice cap extent is like, r=0.9 over the last 40,000 years.

Obviously we need to bring the mammoths back, if we want to fix the global climate.

[falsaberN1]

Gotta reproduce that mammoth jerky somehow.

[dhosek]

Curiously, it turns out that elephants eating fauna actually promotes plant and tree growth. I remember reading something (ca 2007?) about the possibility that reintroducing elephants to the American Southwest could lead to reforestation of areas that are currently desert.

Which, of course, doesn’t really provide good justification for de-extinctifying the mammoth (although as I say this, I wonder if they might acually play a role in preserving the permafrost, as per this recent Science Friday story: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/becoming-earth-how-li... )

[rkallos]

Woolly mammoths were a geoengineer species that have no living proxy. Bringing them back is definitely a controversial project, but there's a case to be made that de-extincting the woolly mammoth could help prevent permafrost from melting.

[rezmason]

Maybe this is what it'll take to seriously combat global warming. Filling zoos with wooly mammoths, and then extorting us into dropping global temperatures to keep them alive.

Unless we're headed for a Day After Tomorrow situation. Then it might be the mammoths keeping us in zoos

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Keeping open options is not madness,even in times of madness. Times change,but the capabilities persist.