When I think of woolly mammoths, I think of Manny the Woolly Mammoth from Ice Age, not the possibility that these extinct creatures could be brought back to life. So, when I learned about the geneticist, George Church, and his team’s efforts to create a mammoth-elephant hybrid in the lab I was shocked. Huge advancements in this endeavor were made in 2013 when Russian scientists discovered an extremely well-preserved mammoth carcass in the permafrost of the Maly Lyakhosvsky Island in northern Siberia (Ghose, 2014). The almost completely intact carcass consisted of three legs, most of the body, part of the head and trunk, and even blood (Ghose, 2014). Mammoth experts from all over the world joined to research this mammoth, nicknamed Buttercup. Because researchers couldn’t obtain a complete genome from the mammoth, Church realized a mammoth-elephant hybrid would be the best option at bringing back at least some characteristics of the woolly mammoth. Church helped to develop the genetic editing technology, CRISPR/Cas9, which he is using to splice mammoth genes into their closest living relative, the Asian elephant (Pruitt, 2018). Church plans to grow the embryo in an artificial womb in the laboratory. The woolly mammoth and the Asian elephant share 99 percent of their DNA, and the hybrid “mammophant,” would have many of the woolly mammoth’s distinguishing characteristics such as “small ears, subcutaneous fat, shaggy hair, and blood that enable the animal to survive in freezing temperatures”
(Pruitt, 2018).
Besides this task being an enormous scientific accomplishment, Church and his team believe that if successful, this hybrid will help protect the endangered Asian elephant species (Pruitt, 2018). Furthermore, they believe that releasing these animals back into their native lands, the Siberian steppe, will help combat global warming (Pruitt, 2018). Through grazing on the arctic tundra, the Mammoth hybrids continuously trample the landscape and snow, which would allow the permafrost to be cooled by the arctic air, keeping it frozen for longer (Mann, 2018). This permafrost contains about twice the amount of carbon than what is currently in the atmosphere (Mann, 2018). If Earth’s temperature continues to increase, this permafrost will melt and release this carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating the global warming problem even further (Mann, 2018). Pleistocene Park is a 16 square-kilometer park in the Siberian Arctic filled with bison, musk ox, moose, yaks and deer created to determine if this global warming approach could be successful (Mann, 2018).
The question then becomes, are woolly mammoths even necessary? The high cost and relative lack of funding of the endeavor would make it difficult (Mann, 2018). However, researchers argue that if this technology is successful in mammoths, it would open the door to other extinct species, such as the passenger pigeon (Shultz, 2016). There are also ethical questions surrounding this project. For example, could the funds be used to save other species on the verge of extinction (Rathi, 2017)? There is also the issue of creating genetic diversity within the species from the limited mammoth DNA that scientists have (Rathi, 2017). Once the “mammophant” was released, how would it interact with the environment and pre-existing species? Although it is impossible to know the answers to all of these questions, there is no doubt, the resurrection of the mammoth would be a remarkable scientific accomplishment.
References:
Ghose, T. (2014, November 16). Photos: A 40,000-Year-Old Mammoth Autopsy. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/48768-photos-mammoth-autopsy.html
Mann, P. (2018, May 14). Can Bringing Back Mammoths Help Stop Climate Change? Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-bringing-back-mammoths-stop-climate-change-180969072/
Pruitt, S. (2018, August 29). Scientists Say They Could Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth Within Two Years. History. https://www.history.com/news/scientists-say-they-could-bring-back-woolly-mammoths-within-two-years
Rathi, A. (2017, February 17). Is a Scientist’s Attempt to Resurrect the Woolly Mammoth Ethical? Quartz. https://qz.com/913682/a-harvard-university-scientistss-attempt-to-resurrect-a-wooly-mammoth-raises-ethical-questions/
Shultz, D. (2016, September 26). Should We Bring Extinct Species Back from the Dead? Science Magazine. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/should-we-bring-extinct-species-back-dead