by inserting this modified DNA into an elephant’s egg cell, and implanting it in an elephant’s womb, you could create a modified elephant that’s nearly identical to the original mammoth

The far north could probably handle the mammoth deextinction.

2021-09-29: Colossal

The company, named Colossal, aims to place 1000s of these magnificent beasts back on the Siberian tundra, 1000s of years after they went extinct. “This is a major milestone for us,” said George Church, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, who for 8 years has been leading a small team of moonlighting researchers developing the tools for reviving mammoths. “It’s going to make all the difference in the world.” Today the tundra is dominated by moss. But when woolly mammoths were around, it was largely grassland. Some researchers have argued that woolly mammoths were ecosystem engineers, maintaining the grasslands by breaking up moss, knocking down trees and providing fertilizer with their droppings. Russian ecologists have imported bison and other living species to a preserve in Siberia they’ve dubbed Pleistocene Park, in the hopes of turning the tundra back to grassland. Dr. Church argued that resurrected woolly mammoths would be able to do this more efficiently. The restored grassland would keep the soil from melting and eroding, he argued, and might even lock away heat-trapping CO2. Initially, Dr. Church envisioned implanting embryos into surrogate female elephants. But he eventually soured on the idea. Even if he could figure out in vitro fertilization for elephants — which no one has done before — building a herd would be impractical, since he would need so many surrogates. Instead, Dr. Church decided to make an artificial mammoth uterus lined with uterine tissue grown from stem cells. “I’m not making a bold prediction this is going to be easy, but everything up to this point has been relatively easy. Every tissue we’ve gone after, we’ve been able to get a recipe for.”

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