http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8257223/Mammoth-could-be-reborn-in-four-years.html

Basically, a Japanese research team managed to find a way in 2008 to clone an animal (mice) with DNA that had been badly damaged by time and frozen for many years. And it just so happen that we have found a few well preserved Mammoth corpses with good enough DNA in recent years.

So, if the team can restore some of this damaged DNA using their technique, they plan to impregnate an elephant mom with a huge mammoth baby in 2 years (it should technically work since they are in the same family), and after a 600 days gestation period, four years from now, Mammoths might roam the Earth again! :twirl:

I love living in the future! Hopefully dinosaurs are next (but no Raptors please :bolt: ).

How long after that before McDonalds start selling mammoth burgers?

But is it really a mammoth? How accurately will their technique recreate the DNA? It may not be a "mammoth" but an "almost mammoth"

No, it would be a pure, 100% all paleolithic Mammoth. In fact, it'd be a perfect clone of one of the Mammoths that were found frozen in the ice in recent years.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081103-frozen-cloning.html

considering the last paragraph there, I don't think they have a very good chance. wasn't that goat or lamb we cloned way back in the day, dolly or something, didn't that thing live a weird life until it finally died? like no other lambs liked it or something, and it couldn't reproduce. I don't think we want a bunch of huge, angry, rejected wooly mammoths running around....

Fine. If they succeed, I want to ride one.

:rofl: I see a "Jurassic Park"-like amusemant park in the future...

Except a Jurrasic Park with all the dinosaurs replaced with mammoths would be lot more comedic

Hmmm, it'd be undeniably cool if it worked out, but I don't know how likely it is. Then again, the scientists say they have a reasonable chance, and they know more about it than me, so I'd be hopeful...

Also with Megatherium. It's going to be the cuddliest zoo of extinct giants ever!

maybe put in some of those "dodo" birds, north-African elephants, some Bali tigers for excitement, and we're set!

too bad there isn't frozen DNA of them, though. at least as far as I know.

Actually, from what I recall, Dolly died from a lung infection that is actually pretty common in sheep.

I would have to dig through my old stuff, but I believe the problem with Dolly * I think it was dolly* she was as old as the cloned cell she came from. So you take an organism that is like 25 years old and take a blood cell from that and clone it the organism will have 25 year old stuff circulating through it. However again i'm unsure about that as I would have to go through the old research information that I dug up on cloning animals and the like.

They say that the creature would be a 100% copy and would be 100% mammoth, but i'm doubting that and it would probably retain traits of the mother that it was born from making it 50% mammoth 50% elephant. However due to that you could perhaps breed two of the 50% creatures to produce a near 100% pure mammoth. My only question is why are these people wanting to bring back the dinosaurs hasn't anyone watched Jurassic park?

This isn't how reproduction works. If that happens, it is a issue with how they made the egg cells.

That was Dolly the sheep. Named after Dolly Parton, because the cells were taken from the mammary gland of a sheep. It died because it had lived it's whole life indoors, because it was so valuable.

Actually no, it died - like flock members of the same age at the same time - from Jaagsiekte disease. Kind of like constant asthma attack for sheep. All the theories about her being older than other sheep has been proven wrong, as it was shown that she started to age slower and only aged up to a genetic state comparable to a nine, not 13, year old sheep of her breed.

In ten years: Velociraptor hunting. It's gonna be all fun and games until they find a way to the mainland. I just love how we humans enjoy messing with nature. Seriously, at least stuff like this is kind of cool when you think about it. Once we release Mosasaurs in to the Atlantic it's a step too far, but not a second before.

No, it's not what they will do, it would be a 50% each creature if they would have somehow found some Mammoth semantozoa, and impregnated an elephant with it.

No, what they will do is use the Mammoth DNA to create a perfect clone (100% identical) of the mammoth (look it up on wikipedia) by putting the Mammoth DNA inside a compatible emptied Elephant egg (with no more elephant DNA, that will then be put inside the Elephant in question. This will "trick" the elephant's body into growing and giving birth to a perfectly identical Mammoth to the one who's DNA was used.

This is, of course, only possible since elephants are (luckily) close enough genetically to mammoths for them to grow the fetus without any problems.

Wouldn't that be Pliocene Park instead?

I want them to clone me a mini T-Rex

More like Pleistocene Park.

Mmmmh. I'll believe it when I see it.
That would be pretty cool, though.



Don't listen to Michael Crichton; he is a moron who thinks scientists are EEEEEEVUL.

EDIT: Wait, change that to the past tense. Seems he's also dead.

A sound of Thunder, without having to go back in time...glorious....

Hopefully cloning is perfected in my lifetime and they bring back extinct species.

Some marsupial lions would be a cool addition to that list. Scary, sure, but cool :happy:.