Woolly Mammoth to Be Cloned, maybe within 5 years

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**BrassScorpion**

In a rare bit of good news caused by global climate change, the melting permafrost in Russia has unveiled some amazing scientific finds that may yield living mammoths in just a few years.

Woolly Mammoth to Be Cloned
http://news.discovery.com/animals/woolly-mammoth-cloned-111205.html

Within five years, a woolly mammoth will likely be cloned, according to scientists who have just recovered well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone. Japan's Kyodo News first reported the find. You can see photos of the thigh bone at this Kyodo page.

Russian scientist Semyon Grigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum, and colleagues are now analyzing the marrow, which they extracted from the mammoth's femur, found in Siberian permafrost soil.

NEWS: All About the Ice Age

Grigoriev and his team, along with colleagues from Japan's Kinki University, have announced that they will launch a joint research project next year aimed at re-creating the enormous mammal, which went extinct around 10,000 years ago.
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DNEWS VIDEO: Cool Jobs: Learn about the exciting life of a fossil hunter.

Mammoths used to be a common sight on the landscape of North America and Eurasia. One of my favorite papers of recent months concerned the earliest-known depiction of an animal from the Americas. It was a mammoth engraved on a mammoth bone. Many of our distant ancestors probably had regular face-to-face encounters with the elephant-like giants.

The key to cloning the woolly mammoth is to replace the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those extracted from the mammoth's bone marrow cells. Doing this, according to the researchers, can result in embryos with mammoth DNA. That's actually been known for a while.

NEWS: Prehistoric Dog Found With Mammoth Bone in Mouth

What's been missing is woolly mammoth nuclei with undamaged genes. Scientists have been on a Holy Grail-type search for such pristine nuclei since the late 1990s. Now it sounds like the missing genes may have been found.

In an odd twist, global warming may be responsible for the breakthrough.

Warmer temperatures tied to global warming have thawed ground in eastern Russia that is almost always permanently frozen. As a result, researchers have found a fair number of well-preserved frozen mammoths there, including the one that yielded the bone marrow.

Is it such a good idea, however, to clone animals that have long been extinct? For a while there's been some discussion of a real-life Jurassic Park setup containing such animals. Introducing these beasts into existing ecosystems could be like bringing in a potentially invasive species that would try to fill some space presently held by other animal(s). Even if the cloned animals were contained in special parks, there could still be a risk of spreading.

So if the woolly mammoth is successfully cloned sooner rather than later, we'd probably be left with more questions and controversy than answers, at least in the short term.

**Nerivant**

Mmm, delicious woolly mammoth within five years.

**Jihadin**

steak or burger?

**Nerivant**

I'm thinking a nice hearty stew.

**BrassScorpion**

Nerivant wrote:Mmm, delicious woolly mammoth within five years.

I made the same joke basically when I shared the news on FB. I also said I want to ride a mammoth at the Ice Age Animal Park. But all kidding aside, it's really exciting news. Since we're never going to get to Mars in my lifetime it's nice to get some good science news.

**Jihadin**

One step closer to cloning a human...that thread going to be nuts

**Nerivant**

Jihadin wrote:One step closer to cloning a human...that thread going to be nuts

Mmm, delicious... wait, ignore that.

**LordofHats**

Nerivant wrote:
Jihadin wrote:One step closer to cloning a human...that thread going to be nuts

Mmm, delicious... wait, ignore that.

**Nerivant**

What can I say? I'm a humanitarian.

**LordofHats**

Nerivant wrote:What can I say? I'm a humanitarian.

...

**Snrub**

Nerivant wrote:I'm thinking a nice hearty stew.

I second this.

This could mean a big boom in the ivory poaching industry.
>Clone Mammoth.
>Release Mammoth.
>Poach Mammoth.
>?????
>Profit.

**CT GAMER**

This will spell our doom...

**Necroshea**

Why not clone the white rhino? I would think a mammoth might have a bit of trouble surviving in the world today. The rhino did just fine, except for not being immune to bullets and greed.

While I wouldn't pass up a mammoth burger, there's something rather cold about a race that brings things back from the past so they can eat it.

**CuddlySquig**

Necroshea wrote:Why not clone the white rhino? I would think a mammoth might have a bit of trouble surviving in the world today. The rhino did just fine, except for not being immune to bullets and greed.

But you forgot that the white rhino is goofy and dumb. The wooly mammoth is awesome and makes great chili. Plus all that fluffy fur makes it magnificent for cuddling!

**Necroshea**

CuddlySquig wrote:
Necroshea wrote:Why not clone the white rhino? I would think a mammoth might have a bit of trouble surviving in the world today. The rhino did just fine, except for not being immune to bullets and greed.

But you forgot that the white rhino is goofy and dumb. The wooly mammoth is awesome and makes great chili. Plus all that fluffy fur makes it magnificent for cuddling!

Until it tries to gore you. Then I equip my best deadric greatsword and shout at it til it's dead.

**Snrub**

CuddlySquig wrote:Plus all that fluffy fur makes it magnificent for cuddling!

Dibs on the worlds first Mammoth shagpile rug.

I wonder what the crossbreeding capabilities of a Mammoth and a regular Elephant would be. Would they be a close enough genetic match to breed or would it be just to dissimilar. Any geneticists care to way in?

**Pacific**

I'm still waiting for someone to alter the genetic structure of a rabbit so it looks like Pikachu. Surely it is only a matter of time?

Good news though if technology is reaching this level, it will be nice if the human race is able to repair some of the damage it has caused to the animal diversity of the planet as well as do the obvious thing and make a Jurassic Park.

**Orlanth**

Cloning mammoths is old news. There are a number of preserved corpses with intact DNA, though we dont know how to build from DNA alone, Jurassic Park is still fantasy, however intact bone marrow cells are better and easier.

Jihadin wrote:One step closer to cloning a human...that thread going to be nuts

Cloning humans is easy, we don't do it for moral/political/social reasons.

There is no difference in procedure between making a cloned human and Dolly the Sheep.

**Pacific**

Actually I think it is a great deal more difficult, hence why as far as we know hasn't been achieved yet. The one scientific team that claimed to have done it in Korea turned out to have been lying, but apparently has since gone on record to claim that he is close to achieving it. The others were that rather eccentric (in polite terms) religious cult, I believe called the Rayliens, who also claimed to have successfully cloned an embryo but their comments have been dismissed by pretty much all of the scientific community.

If something is achievable by science then usually someone, somewhere, will be trying to do it, regardless of any punitive measures or moral judgements that governments try and place on them.

**Orlanth**

Pacific wrote:Actually I think it is a great deal more difficult, hence why as far as we know hasn't been achieved yet. The one scientific team that claimed to have done it in Korea turned out to have been lying, but apparently has since gone on record to claim that he is close to achieving it. The others were that rather eccentric (in polite terms) religious cult, I believe called the Rayliens, who also claimed to have successfully cloned an embryo but their comments have been dismissed by pretty much all of the scientific community.

If something is achievable by science then usually someone, somewhere, will be trying to do it, regardless of any punitive measures or moral judgements that governments try and place on them.

I disagree, cloning is very difficult. it has only been achieved a handful of times and then by well funded teams from major science institutions. Sure some cults might want to clone humans, just as some private groups want their own nukes neither is feasible. In general those who can wont those who would cant. Those organisation that could clone a human, and the shortlist would be very small would know better than to do so, or are linked to a government which would get worried about the idea for one reason or another.
We might draw a line to include top secret guv'ment black labs, but any discussion of those without firm evidence can be dismissed as conspiracy hysteria.

**mattyrm**

I think cloning humans should be legal, if you get run over on the way to work, your wife can just let a spare out of the shed and you dont miss a days pay.

Think of the economical gains!

And on topic.. I would fething love to eat a mammoth.

**Jihadin**

Carnivores up in here...its scarey...an actual mammoth from time lost in..whatever...A1 or ketchup? A1 if its steak and ketchup if burger. A Black Angus Mammoth...has a nice ring to it

**gorgon**

Hmm...cloning...reviving extinct animals...Russian scientists...yep, nothing could possibly go wrong with this.

**Jihadin**

Putin Dynasty inbound

**Castiel**

Speaking from a purely ecological point of view, cloning the mammoth and releasing it to live in the wild would be an awful idea. There is a reason they died, and they have no place in todays ecosystems, and could very well lead to more extinctions by outcompeteing todays organisms, and by removing those animals from the food chain any animals that feed upon them would also be affected. Wild mammoths = bad idea.

Keeping them in zoos would hardly be fair. We could only have a very small amount of mammoths in the world, and it would be unfair on the animals themselves to only bring back a few. I don't think we should clone them just because we can. What's dead should stay that way, its gone for a reason.

Things like the White Rhino though, that are on the way out due to humans, is where this science could, and possibly should, be applied.

**Shadowseer_Kim**

Steak or Burger? How limited.

Ribs all the way!

**Howard A Treesong**

Human cloning could be done, so could the white rhino. There are some oddities about cloning, as with health problems in dolly the sheep that I'm not sure were really ironed out.

The problems with the mammoth are that you are cloning something that isn't the same species as the surrogate, even assuming you have an intact genome. In trials I've read about on other species (like cows and buffalo IIRC) there's a very high rejection rate, stillborn and infant mortality when implanting material from one to the other. This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't for the fact that you just don't have hundreds of elephants around simply waiting to be used for experimentation of this sort merely to produce a single mammoth.

It would only be fit for a zoo, as behavioural studies would be worthless and also as a herd animal it would be very lonely. I've seen elephants at the zoo, small numbers kept in a small area, it's just upsetting. They are supposed to roam the plains.

**CuddlySquig**

Howard A Treesong wrote:Human cloning could be done, so could the white rhino. There are some oddities about cloning, as with health problems in dolly the sheep that I'm not sure were really ironed out.

The problems with the mammoth are that you are cloning something that isn't the same species as the surrogate, even assuming you have an intact genome. In trials I've read about on other species (like cows and buffalo IIRC) there's a very high rejection rate, stillborn and infant mortality when implanting material from one to the other. This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't for the fact that you just don't have hundreds of elephants around simply waiting to be used for experimentation of this sort merely to produce a single mammoth.

It would only be fit for a zoo, as behavioural studies would be worthless and also as a herd animal it would be very lonely. I've seen elephants at the zoo, small numbers kept in a small area, it's just upsetting. They are supposed to roam the plains.

You're no fun.

MAMMOTH BURGERS! MAMMOTH CUDDLES! MAMMOTH RIDES! MAMMOTHS! MAMMOTHS! EVERYWHERE!

**Jihadin**

Actually...Russia have wide ranges of land for...where the mammoth may roam...antalopes may play...eerr..whatever...Think of the money that would bring in from the tourist.

**rockerbikie**

It would be cool if they could that with the Tasmanian Tiger.