The woolly mammoth soon resurrected by genetics? – Point

One small step for genetics, one giant leap for the woolly mammoth? This great mythical animal, extinct there 4000 years, could soon make his return. A team of scientists has managed to almost completely reconstruct the genome of two prehistoric elephants, according to the results of their study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology . One had lived in northern Siberia, the other on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. The DNA was extracted from a tooth and a tissue sample. Enough to give ideas to some fans of Jurassic Park …

An elephant as
surrogate

This scientific breakthrough opens the way indeed potentially to a “re-creation” of the animal, which, however, raises many ethical problems. “It would be great fun, with the idea to see a living mammoth, and observe how he behaves, how it moves,” he told the BBC Love Dalen, the Natural History Museum of Sweden, co-author the study, “but I’m not sure we should do it.” The first problem. “Should be used as a surrogate mother elephant and this poses an ethical problem, since this process may cause pain to the female”

More generally, the mammoth might feel well alone, according to researcher Beth Shapiro of the University of California, Santa Cruz, also questioned by British television. “Elephants are very social creatures, and there is no reason to think that mammoths were not,” she has said. However, “a mammoth would necessarily only on Earth. He could live in freedom in the Arctic after the birth of many other animals. And unless we can create a lot of mammoths without using elephants, it all seems ethically very unhealthy. ” The woolly mammoth is expected to rest in peace for a while.