The Resurrection of the Woolly Mammoth

Humanity is faced with yet another ethical dilemma: just because we can, doesn't mean we should

Hiya!

Chances are that if I asked you to imagine a dragon, unicorn, or woolly mammoth, I probably wouldn’t need to describe them. You already know that dragons resemble giant flying lizards, unicorns look like horses with a single horn atop their heads, and woolly mammoths resemble furry elephants.

Except that dragons and unicorns are magical creatures that never existed (that we know of), while woolly mammoths were quite real indeed — and might become so again. Scientists recently made a significant breakthrough that brings them one step closer to resurrecting the prehistoric woolly mammoth by 2028.

Science-Nonfiction

It’s nothing short of incredible that we exist in a Time when the idea of resurrecting an extinct animal is closer to reality than science fiction. Respected geneticist and serial biotech entrepreneur George Church and Ben Lamm, an emerging technology and software entrepreneur, created Colossal Biosciences, the world’s first de-extinction company.

Colossal utilizes CRISPR technology, which the National Human Genome Research Institute says research scientists use to “selectively modify the DNA of living organisms.” A statement about Colossal’s recent breakthrough, which I’ll tell you about next, describes the company as the following:

“Colossal creates innovative technologies for species restoration, critically endangered species protection and the repopulation of critical ecosystems that support the continuation of life on Earth. Colossal is accepting humanity's duty to restore Earth to a healthier state, while also solving for the future economies and biological necessities of the human condition through cutting-edge science and technologies.”

It’s astonishing that Colossal is working toward such monumental goals, but it also sounds a smidge like the beginning of real-life Jurassic Park. Except instead of dinosaurs, Colossal wants to bring back the woolly mammoth – or at least something like it.

CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, Ben Lamm, and Eriona Hysolli, the Head of Biological Sciences at Colossal and woolly mammoth species lead, wrote an article published by Newsweek explaining the project. They write:

“[W]e're not just making single nucleotide edits, we're able to do multiplex gene editing of lots of parts of the genome at the same time. We're also able to leverage increasingly bigger blocks of DNA.”

In other words, the technologies and innovations at Colossal are growing quickly. They explain the company is “big on parallel pathing,” meaning they work on multiple avenues at once instead of operating in a “linear way,” which would take much longer. They credit this research method to their fast-approaching timeline of producing the first new woolly mammoth by 2028. They state in the article:

“Our first mammoth calves will be born in 2028. We're in the editing phase right now. Science is hard. Things could change in the future. But we're on track for our 2028 goal, which is very exciting.”

Aside from going down in history for completing such a feat, there’s another reason the researchers want to achieve results sooner rather than later.

Namely, climate change and the ominous prediction that Earth could lose half of all biodiversity by 2050 (or sooner). So Colossal wants to, and is, creating technology to “rewild extinct animals into ecosystems,” aiding in conservation, health care, and human longevity in the process.

For the woolly mammoth project, the scientists aim to genetically engineer a cold-resistant elephant with the biological traits of the mammoth and use them to preserve the arctic ecosystems the giants once roamed.

Why Mammoths?

People sometimes imagine woolly mammoths walking among the dinosaurs, but the Truth is they were separated by about 65 million years. In fact, woolly mammoths went extinct less than 4,000 years ago – meaning they were still around during the construction of the Great Pyramids in Egypt. But why do scientists want to bring them back?