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Science

How To Clone A Mammoth 333

Posted by timothy from the time-to-buy-a-new-bench dept.
psyconaut writes: "In a story that sounds more fitting for the big screen than the London Times, Japanese researchers are planning on cloning a mammoth by impregnating an Indian elephant. Apparently the source of the DNA will be a newly found mammoth specimen in Siberia. Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years."
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How To Clone A Mammoth More

How To Clone A Mammoth

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  • Do we really need that much detail? (Score:3, Funny)

    by PyroMosh ( 287149 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:36AM (#4103152) Homepage
    About 100 mammoths have been recovered in Russia, among them the world's finest museum examples. These include the skeleton of the Adams mammoth, found in Yakutia in 1806, and the Berezovka mammoth, recovered in northeastern Siberia in 1901. This had an erect penis, thought to be because it died of asphyxiation. The stuffed Berezovka mammoth and the skeleton are both on display at the Zoological Museum of St Petersburg.

    I mean, c'mon, isn't that just begging for the trolls to just run with it?
    • Oh, seriously, c'mon now, look at what you're implying. I seriously doubt these 14 year-old, scrawny, pimply trolls could lift an erect mammoth penis, much less run with it!

      If they could do anything that somewhat resembled heavy lifting, they wouldn't be trolling Slashdot. Perhaps if they could recognize anything that somewhat resembled an erection, the same could be said.

      ...Opening the floodgates...
    • This had an erect penis, thought to be because it died of asphyxiation

      Wow...the ramifications to this are endless. Is it the earliest known case of autoerotic asphyxiation? I didn't even know other animals practiced that....but I guess a mammoth could just wrap that trunk around its neck....
  • So when are they going to clone some sabre-tooth
    tigers?
    • Actually, 'sabre-toothed tiger' is a bit of a misnomer. You are referring to the Smilodon [berkeley.edu], which is not closely related to tigers at all.

      Sabre teeth were actually a relatively common evolutionary phenomenon during the Cenozoic period, and not only in cats.

      Too much to write about. Go read :)

      Talisman
      • Actually, 'sabre-toothed tiger' is a bit of a misnomer.... not closely related to tigers at all.

        Myself, I have to say I like the name smilodon better - it just brings a Cheshire Cat image to mind... I love it!

        But I don't think there's anything wrong with 'Sabre Tooth Tigre'. It may be inaccurate, but the same thing hasn't stopped us from naming all sorts of other things in the same way - just how closely related to the originals are "sea cucumber", or "whale shark" or any number of other 'misnomers' in common use.
        • how closely related to the originals are "sea cucumber", or "whale shark" or any number of other 'misnomers' in common use

          Not to mention "tit-mouse."

    • Re:Need bigger cats (Score:5, Funny)

      by rosewood ( 99925 ) <rosewood@@@chat...ru> on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:06AM (#4103217) Homepage Journal
      Thats a scary thought... what if he locks me out of my house and I am forced to bang on my door and scream for my wife?
    • Sabre-toothed cats? Hell, let's go for broke, and crank out the prehistoric sabre-toothed cows! Can't wait for the Gateway commercial with those babies in it...

      ... and as for the asphyxiated mammoth with an erection, isn't that how Michael Hutchence went too?

  • Usefull (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Ost99 ( 101831 )
    Perhaps they can use the cloned mammoths to make new elephants; by 2052 they will be extinct.

    - Ost

  • Yummy (Score:2, Funny)

    by Hanul ( 533254 )
    I'm waiting for my first real mammoth steak. Flintstones had some, I want some, too.

  • Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Martigan80 ( 305400 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:40AM (#4103163) Journal
    And why would it be so great to have them back? I just don't see why we they are spending so much money to try to bring back a dead animal, is it an ego thing? Do they think the new hybrid can help us out some way? I just don't think we should be treading in this kind of water.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree AT davidglover DOT org> on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:51AM (#4103186) Homepage
      "Why not?" is a much more interesting question than "Why?". It's how science advances.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rtblmyazz ( 592071 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:49AM (#4103323)
        Why not bring back a species that was extinct due to the actions of mankind like the Dodo bird, rather than something that nature or God extincted, probably for some "valid" reason ? It seems more fitting to bring something back that we destroyed by our own ignorance or greed.
        • Why not bring back a species that was extinct due to the actions of mankind

          We are. Follow this link [museums.org.za] to see info on the Quagga Project, in Cape Town.

          Quaggas were a sub-species of zebra which lived only in the tip of the cape region and were wiped out by hunting.

          The Quagga project is an attempt to bring them back by selectively breeding from normal zebras that have quagga-like traits.

        • Because. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @08:41AM (#4103531) Homepage
          Why not bring back a species that was extinct due to the actions of mankind like the Dodo bird, rather than something that nature or God extincted, probably for some "valid" reason?

          I believe the current thinking [bagheera.com] is that mammoths were hunted to extinction by men. Mammoths and sabretooth tigers became extinct about 12,000 years ago in North America, which coincides nicely with the arrival of humans on the continent. Hence, by your argument, we should bring them back.
          • I am also a subscriber to the hunting-extinction theory.


            Most of the arguments against the human-driven extinction of the mammoths are based upon population sizes and the difficulty of taking down a mammoth for primitive humans.


            What most academics arent considering is that when humans gain access to an easy supply of food, such as mammoth meat, population sizes will spike nicely to take advantage of the resource. Since the mammoths would become increasingly scarce as they were overhunted, the human population of mammoth hunters would also decline. After the last mammoth was eaten, the survivors would switch to other large game. Such a brief spike in human population size would not leave an overwhelming fossil record, because the time involved is so short.


            As for how hard mammoths were to take down: its best not to underestimate humans ability to kill things, for fairly obvious reasons. Some academics are quick to belittle the capabilities of earlier humans, probably stemming from their isolation and distance from field survival situations.



            Its sad that we as a species continue this trend even to this day. Whales are continuing to decline. Its morose when environmentalist try to push beached whales back into the water: they generally beach themselves due to poisoning or internal injuries casued by human actions and byproducts.

          • Re:Because. (Score:2, Insightful)

            by lobsterGun ( 415085 )
            Man can't take all of the credit for the extinction of the Mammoths. Current thinking is that there were three contributing factors that caused their extinction: Its called the Chill-Kill-Ill theory. It goes like this:

            - Chill: As the glaciers melted after the last ice age there was a period of time where the temeratures were lower than normal. This was a stress on the ecosystem that the Mammoths were used to as they had lived through at least a dozen previous ice ages.
            - Kill: Added to the mix the arrival of a new predator (man) that they had never encountered before.
            - Ill: Further added to the mix is the introduction of a whole slew of foreign microbes that the new predators brought with them.

            Any one of the above were probably not enough to wipe out the mamoths, but combined they put enough stress on their ecosystem that the mammoths were unable to survive. ...at least that's what was on the Discovery Channel two nights ago.
        • ahem...the current hypothesis is man killed the Mammoth in North America.

          Here are a couple of articles on the subject:

          TIME [time.com]
          Outriderbooks [outriderbooks.com]
          Discovery [discovery.com]
          Article [exn.ca]
          • Yeh, right.

            Ever try to hunt elephants with rifles and jeeps? You're still likely, to this day to end up as elephant toe jam, rather than proud hunter who has slain the mighty land mammal.

            So, caveman joe and his buddies, armed with stone tipped spears and no mounts somehow manages to extinct them? Give me a fucking break. Is there a single thing that stone age humans could have done to mammoths, other than pissing off an intelligent, incredibly huge mammal that often has 4 ft long ivory sabres attached to its skull?

            Yeh. Supposing that happened very often, it's the wrong species that got wiped out.
            • Ever try to hunt elephants with rifles and jeeps? You're still likely, to this day to end up as elephant toe jam, rather than proud hunter who has slain the mighty land mammal.

              No, I have never done any big game hunting. Have you?

              But stone age hunters won't be worrying about being sporting.

              Stampeding the herd with a grass fire might let them single out the weaker or younger individuals. Or perhaps they could stampede them over a cliff. Native Americans did precisely this, [head-smashed-in.com] prior to the introduction of the horse back to North America.

              • I'm not saying they never once ate mammoth. I will concede it happened a few times.

                This though, is such a far cry from managing to wipe out an entire species, that I would think you were trolling me.

                Stampeding them over a cliff works nice, if they are a super villain, you are James Bond, and you have a helicopter waiting to pull you safely away on a rope ladder. Unfortunately, mammoths have neither sinister mustaches nor an enviroment with a surplus of convenient cliffs. It doesn't work.

                I don't claim to know what killed them, and I certainly won't defend humanity when it's perfectly clear we're willing to cause extinction, but your theory smacks of some kind of arrogance, almost hubris. I mean, we're so nifty, only we can wipe out species? You'll have to do better than that.
        • Why not bring back a species that was extinct due to the actions of mankind like the Dodo bird, rather than something that nature or God extincted, probably for some "valid" reason ?

          There's reasonable evidence to suggest that the mammoth was driven to extinction by our distant ancestors hunting them for meat (herding them over cliffs and the like). Then again, some people would consider "extinct due to mankind" as equally valid or even equivalent to "extinct due to God or Nature".

          Incidentally, the dodo was pushed out by the introduction of pigs to its native habitat, not because they were hunted. They were apparently pretty poor eating, oily and tough.

          (Yes, I've been watching lots of BBC series.)

        • It is commonly believed that we are the reason for the extinction of mammoths (assuming you own-up to the actions of your ancestors, of course.)

          The the question is: Do the actions of Neanderthals constitue an act of nature? If not, how far back in our evolutionary path to we have to go to find a "natural" man? If so, at what point did man become "unnatural?"
    • But they're an endangered species! You can't get any more endangered than the woolly mammoth!

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bodrius ( 191265 )
      I don't know if it would be great to have them back as a successful, populous species, but it would be great for science to have a specimen or two alive.

      Why?

      Because we learn as much from dead things as we pretend we do.

      There's a lot more to animal anatomy than bones, and there's a lot more to biology and zoology than anatomy.

      We speculate a lot on the behavior of animals based on fossils, but there are limits.

      Even with fully functioning, breathing animals we don't know exactly how cats "purrr", can you imagine how little we know of an animal we have never seen alive? How many times have we changed our minds on the diet of a dinosaur, or the way it walked?

      Sure, social behavior may be contaminated by learned behavior from its contemporary counterparts. But with enough specimens in different conditions, we could learn even about some of their social patterns (non-learned behavior).

      • I meant:

        Because we DON'T learn as much from death things as we pretend we do.

    • And why would it be so great to have them back? I just don't see why we they are spending so much money to try to bring back a dead animal, is it an ego thing?

      Maybe because it's their money? Most people don't tell you what to do with your money.

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by yog ( 19073 )
      Why try to land on the moon? All that trouble and money to get three guys up there, only two of whom could actually walk around on the surface. And then abandon all the equipment. All they accomplished was to litter the moon.

      Why try to build smaller and faster chips? Computers seem plenty fast enough. My word processor never lags behind my typing. It used to, with my old Commodore, though even then it wasn't a big deal.

      Why do basic research? It doesn't seem useful. They should focus on curing diseases instead. All that wasted tax money you know.

      Why meet new people? I already know all the people I need to. What can knowing more people possibly accomplish?

      Why do libraries need funding? I don't use libraries and I don't see the point of them either. That money should be used for something more directly useful such as filling potholes on the streets I drive on.

      Etc. You get the idea.
    • 1) Biodiversity. We can have 3 kinds of elephant instead of 2.

      2) Economic value of a cold-weather elephant. Elephants as beasts of burden are a useful part of the economy in parts of India. Extending their range up to the temperate forests extends the total economic value of the species.

      3) We probably ate all the mammoths in the first place. Maybe they taste good.

      4) We are humans. We mess with things. It is good. Only very sad and negative people respond to every proposed endeavour with wails of "Why bother?" or "This doesn't help me!".

      Moas next please, then some kind of unicorn or dragon :)
    • What's all this we business? Is someone taking your money to do this?

      Face it buddy, not everything in the world is done to your whim. If somebody else wants to spend their money on this, it none of your business.
    • Think of the amount of food you could get from a mammoth.. I'd love to have a mammoth t-bone.. they should mix in a little cow dna with the elephant and mammoth dna for a tasty treat.
    • Sure, it advances science. But damn, sombody is going to be rolling in fame and fortune. First, I'm sure the process is patented 5 ways to Sunday. Second, you can regulate the rarity of these animals... Zoos, museums and other attractions would pay huge for this sort of thing. Yeah, they're in it for the science, but being famous for creating the first prehistoric animal and making bank on top of it can't be a bad incentive either...
    • Cuz they're tasty.... mmmmmm mamoth...

      Anyone remember that episode of Northern Exposure?

  • 50 years (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 )
    ..in which time some asshole will ruin everybody's fun by cloning a mammoth through some other method.

  • No doubt (Score:3, Funny)

    by Advocadus Diaboli ( 323784 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:44AM (#4103170)
    that the species of mammoth extinct.

    "Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years."

    50 years of pregnancy? Usually elephants have 2 years (if I'm not mistaking this). So no wonder that mamooths didn't have much kids and were wiped out from that planet.

  • Jurassic Park (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ubi_NL ( 313657 ) <joris.benschop@g ... Ecom minus punct> on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:45AM (#4103171) Journal
    During my MSc in biology, we had a genetics class in which such a protocol was discussed, mainly because 'jurassic park' just came out.

    Basically the professor said that trying to anything like this was like "pushing an analog tape in a CD player and expecting music to come out"

    Ontogeny of mammals is really dependent on interactions between mother and child, and these interactions are quite specific for a species.
    • Actually, better then Jurassic Park, Sluggy [sluggy.com] has some storylines about Percy, the cloned carnivorous intelligent wooley mammoth who is a bad influence on the series' lovable-but-slightly-dangerous-former-Giger-alien.
    • Basically the professor said that trying to anything like this was like "pushing an analog tape in a CD player and expecting music to come out"

      They said the same thing about flight...

  • The University of Kinki??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by __aadhrk6380 ( 585073 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:49AM (#4103177) Journal
    "The science departments from the universities of Kinki and Tifu in Japan, who have sponsored the excavation of the legs, hope to receive Russian permission in the autumn to export fragments of mammoth skin for research."

    "The part of the body that the Japanese are most keen to get are the testicles."

    Never mind...

  • The questions nobody asks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aceticon ( 140883 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:49AM (#4103179)
    • What does the indian elefant think about being impregnated by a dead mammoth? Does this fall under necrophilia?
    • What about the psychological wellfare of the baby mammoth - Will he be shunned by his mother for "being too hairy"? Will living in a disfunctional family cause him to go into a life of crime?
    • Will bigger tusks and hairy body make the mammoth look more or less sexy to female-elefants?
    • If impregnating an Indian elephant with mammoth sperm produced young, that offspring would be impregnated with more mammoth sperm and the process repeated in the next generation

      Jeeze they want her entire family fu*ked up. I would object strongly if I was the Indian elephant

    • The reason your the only one (or are part of a small minority) asking this is because nobody really cares. You're looking at fame, fortune and science for it's own sake here. Concern for a mere animal doesn't even factor in when compared to these lofty ambitions.

  • impregnate (Score:3, Funny)

    by hitchhacker ( 122525 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:50AM (#4103181) Homepage
    <Chef> If you want to combine a mammoth and an elephant, just get them to make sweet love.

    <Stan> I don't think an elephant would make love to a mammoth.

    <Cartman> I don't think my mammoth would want to make love to that stupid elephant.

    <Chef> Sure they would. But you're gonna have to get them in the mood.

    <Stan>Well, how do you do that?

    <Chef> Do what I do, get them good and drunk.

    -metric

  • What do you get...? (Score:4, Funny)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @06:54AM (#4103190) Homepage
    To quote the Muppets Tonight:

    "What do you get if you cross an elephant with a rhino?"

    "'EllifIknow"

    (ducks, runs)

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • Isn't this a movie? (Score:3, Funny)

    by shut_up_man ( 450725 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:00AM (#4103205) Homepage
    Extremely rich but cracked old dude (Richard Attenborough) decides to make a theme park island with cloned mammoths, re-established by using the DNA of a Siberian mammoth and filling out the rest with that of an Indian Elephant. All of the creatures are created female, but he didn't count on the rare sex-change properties of the Indian Elephant when viewing Sex in the City reruns. The mammoths breed like wildfire, overwhelming the hi-tech pens and security systems during a hurricane, as the fat chief programmer (Wayne Knight) smuggles out a baby mammoth in a tin of shaving cream. Some of the mammoths exhibit unsettlingly high intelligence, hunting as a pack and making musical instruments with their trunks. Luckily a mammoth researcher (Sam Neill) his partner (Laura Dern) and a chaos theorist (Jeff Goldblum) are present and save the day.
  • Why to clone a mammoth?

  • So you thought those thick glasses and hairy ears would take you out of the gene pool forever? Not true! Now you too can beat mother-nature.

    All you have to do is get caught in an avalanche and, a few thousand years from now, scientists will use you to populate a zoo full of half-blind, hairy-eared humans!

  • sounds familier.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by night_flyer ( 453866 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:24AM (#4103259) Homepage
    Professor Hopes To Clone Mammoth
    by
    Jolyn Okimoto,
    Associated Press Writer

    1:07 AM EST; October 2, 1999; Flagstaff, AZ (AP) -- It sounds like a movie plot come to life: A Northern Arizona University Geologist aims to excavate and clone a woolly mammoth from DNA. Larry Agenbroad concedes that cloning the animal is unlikely. Still, he says biologists remain optimistic and he is excited about the project. Agenbroad is part of an international team of scientists whose first task is to cut the cloning candidate -- the likes of which roamed the Earth about two million years ago.

    The adult male mammoth, estimated to be about 40 years old when it became frozen, was found by a 9-year-old nomadic reindeer herder in 1997. It's been named Jarkov, after the boy's family. "To feel the skin and touch the flesh of the mammoth will be quite spectacular. It's the closest I've gotten to an animal I've been chasing for more than 30 years," said Agenbroad, sitting in an office crammed full of mammoth bones, teeth, figurines, and paintings.

    Agenbroad and scientists from the Netherlands, France and Russia, are removing the ice-encased animal from the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia and airlifting it more than 200 miles to the city of Khatanga. The mammoth will be kept frozen there in an underground tunnel, where scientists will study the 11-foot-tall animal. Besides analyzing dirt, pollen, and even its stomach contents, a primary task is to extract DNA for cloning.

    The cloning process involves putting DNA from the mammoth into an Asian elephant's egg that has been stripped of elephant genes. So even though an elephant would give birth, the baby would be a mammoth, not a hybrid, Agenbroad said. "I don't think (the elephant) would know the difference, though she might wonder why her baby is so hairy." Agenbroad said he is not counting on success. "I guess it would be a rarity, but the biologists are quite optimistic," he said.

    A medical ethicist at the medical school and the department of philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is among the naysayers. "You need live nuclei and live eggs, plus a host mammoth mother to gestate the fetus. Because none of these are available, 'Jurassic Park' to the contrary, it won't succeed,'' Greg Pence said, referring to the movie in which cloning was used to resurrect dinosaurs.

    But scientists at Texas A&M University proved last month that live cells are not needed for cloning. The team successfully cloned a steer from the hide of another that died a year ago. Still, the odds are slim for mammoth cloning, said Hessel Bouma, III, a cell biology expert at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "It would start with DNA not from a fresh cell, but from one haphazardly frozen by nature,'' Bouma said. "The chances of DNA being completely intact is very, very small." But why bring back the mammoth in the first place? "Why not?" asked Agenbroad. "I'd rather have a cloned mammoth than another sheep," he added, referring to Dolly, cloned in 1997 from the udder of a six-year-old ewe. Agenbroad isn't the only one excited about the cloning prospects. "I think it would be a really wonderful thing," said Paul Martin, a retired professor of geosciences and a large mammals expert from the University of Arizona. "It would be a moon shot."

    • You need live nuclei and live eggs, plus a host mammoth mother to gestate the fetus. Because none of these are available, 'Jurassic Park' to the contrary, it won't succeed

      Feh. This is why I don't care much for "medical ethicists". He leaves no room for clever tricks to get around the (large number of) problems inherent in the issue, spitting out a bunch of generalizations and negativity based in his own misconceptions of the process.

      As a rule, I find the automatic response of a "medical ethicist" to any potential advance is "No". God only knows how many people their clever little arguments are going to kill over the next few decades. The sad thing is that the process has been institutionalized now, and will continue to act as an impediment to real medical/biotechnological progres for decades to come.

      How does this fellow define "live" eggs and/or sperm, anyway? You do need intact chromosomes, but their plan to generate 88% mammoths is perfectly viable provided they can get decent sperm. Since nobody has (to my knowledge) even looked at this issue yet, his statement is meaningless.

  • In other news.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by fadeaway ( 531137 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:32AM (#4103275)
    McDonalds has reportedly changed their motto from "100% Real Beef!" to "100% Real Meat!"..

  • is this cloning!!?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tanveer1979 ( 530624 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:39AM (#4103292) Homepage Journal
    "If impregnating an Indian elephant with mammoth sperm produced young, that offspring would be impregnated with more mammoth sperm and the process repeated in the next generation, producing a creature that was 88 per cent mammoth. The process would take about 50 years."

    This is not really cloning, this is similar to producing hybrid dogs by cross-breeding. And this does not really advance research, man has been doing this to crops, livestock and all for so long.
    It just seems like researchers with nothing to do. The real step forward would be the Dolly method. That would be cloning.
    Infact such a bit is underway in australia. Scientists are planning to clone a tasmaniana Tiger. [wired.com]
    Now that would be the perfect push for cloning tech!

  • More interesting than Zoo Attraction (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kaz Riprock ( 590115 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:43AM (#4103300)
    As a bioinformaticist, I'd find it more interesting to get the DNA sequence from these frozen specimens than growing them up Jurassic-Park-style. A lot of what we know about our "ancestor's DNA" (see the race gene, the talking gene stories by S Paabo) is extrapolated from the DNA in organisms now-a-days. The "years ago" applied to these things are highly suspect (attributed by simple math extractions based upon pseudo-expected mutation rates). Comparing the DNA of these frozen specimens to that of modern-day elephants can shed some light on mammalian DNA mutation rates and protein evolution. Right now, we can usually only make best guesses given a somewhat single-rate equation for time. It is completely imaginable that the mutations happened in batches and by looking at the differences, we may be able to answer some of these questions.

    Of course, instead we could just make these things to flash in front of the people and make them shudder in awe of our mighty genetic prowess until they escape our electric fences and hunt us down with their extended middle claw...

  • Is this like "pollution credits"? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @07:49AM (#4103321)
    Is this like "pollution credits"? For every extinct species we bring back, do we get to take one out for free?

    -- Terry
    • bringing back 1 won't have too significant of an impact, but introducing a foreign species to an environment, or one that has been missing for quite some time, could seriously disrupt some things. We're gonna see more things like the crazy fish in lakes from Japan or something. Of course, I would only call it a "success" if 2 cloned mammoths were able to successfully mate.
      • "Of course, I would only call it a "success" if 2 cloned mammoths were able to successfully mate."

        For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the mammoths would agree with you...

        -- Terry

  • Scary thought (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Goldmember ( 599341 )
    Does it ever puzzle you to think about some future civilization on earth that discovers your skeleton, extracts your dna and brings you back to life after a million years of peaceful time underground?

    I wonder, how could you make sure none of your own dna is preserved after you're done with this living thing? I still hope I have copyright for my blueprints, even after my death. Or another thing, how could you send your dna in a spaceship to distant stars, hoping that the aliens out there can clone you and start a new civilization on a nearby planet, you being the Adam or Eve...

    This cloning thing is confusing me... gotta live now and worry later.
  • Things won't get really interesting until we clone a Neanderthal.

  • The "London" Times (Score:2, Informative)

    by Tet ( 2721 )
    more fitting for the big screen than the London Times

    The name of the newspaper is just "The Times", not the "London Times". It's the oldest English language newspaper in the world, and other papers added a regional prefix to differentiate themselves from the original Times (e.g., the NY Times, and local papers like the Barnet Borough Times). It's also no longer purely based in London. When I worked there a few years ago, there were three main offices, one in Wapping (London), one in Liverpool and one in Scotland. Each had their own set of journalists and editorial staff, and printing was done at all three sites, plus several others dotted around the country.

  • Mammoth DNA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lovebyte ( 81275 ) <lovebyte2000@gmail3.1415926.com minus pi> on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @08:47AM (#4103571) Homepage
    There is only 115 streches [ebi.ac.uk] of DNA that are known in public databases. Most of these are not that interesting if you want to make a clone. So there is still a long way to go.

  • Word is that Disney is helping to fund this. They've asked for a special one-off cross breed of a basset hound and the Mammoth.

    Look for the release of "Real Life Dumbo" in the year 2053.
  • The last living mammoths have been dated [arizona.edu] to 4100 years ago on an island offshore Siberia. This a few centuries AFTER the pyramids of Egypt were constructed.
  • Mammoths frozen immediately after death are rare gems, as there is a higher chance of their body parts and internal organs being preserved.

    The part of the body that the Japanese are most keen to get are the testicles.

    Wow. Why am I not surprised? :-)
    • Especially considering the name of the Universities:
      The science departments from the universities of Kinki and Tifu in Japan ...

      Maybe the University of Kinki will next look at fetishism as a way to help Mammoth's courtship.
  • "Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth and the process will take about 50 years"

    Considering that apes, baboons and the like are closer than this to humans (something like over 90% I believe?), will this just be an echo from the past? Meaning the remaining 12% might make such a huge difference that the creation would be more like a new species than a reincarnation.
    • 88% mammoth DNA, 12% elephant.

      Elephant DNA is probably already within 95% mammoth anyway (or more, it's just a guess)... meaning that 88% is very close.

      If it doesn't make sense after thinking about it for a few minutes, please voluntarily banish yourself from posting to science arrticles on slashdot.

  • Bison found in Colorado Glacier (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anne_Nonymous ( 313852 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @09:31AM (#4103848) Homepage Journal
    Recently the remains of a Bison were found in a Colorado glacier. They are only 200 to 400 years old, and might be a good way to practice restoration cloning. The DNA is "fresher" and could be used to impregnate a much closer relative (genetically) of the original beast. What better way to learn to do this to older samples?

    www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E 80 7802,00.html?search=filter

    (No direct link, see the middle of the page)
  • Due to genetic constraints, the final mammoth specimen will only be 88% pure mammoth.

    They went on to say the other 12% will be pulled from the DNA of a frog.
  • It appears that the Japanese scientists involved want to clone up a mammoth for an "Ice Age wildlife park" in northeastern Siberia. If so, they're going to have more problems than just creating a mammoth.

    Siberia and unglaciated Alaska may have had a very different ecosystem way back then, if what paleontologists like R. Dale Guthrie have claimed is correct. The climate was colder but dryer, with a "mammoth steppe" that was more like the American West than modern-day tundra and coniferous forest, with more grass and shrubs. (Read Guthrie's Frozen Fauna: The Story of Blue Babe [amazon.com] for details.) That's the only way it could have supported those spectacular large animals.

    I wish the article had more information on the proposed park and exactly what's going on. If they don't have any way of changing the local ecosystem back to mammoth steppe, they're going to have to feed the animals artificially, making it more like a zoo than a wildlife preserve.

    Yet, according to the article, they've already gone ahead and imported musk oxen and several hundred wild horses and are negotiating with Canada to buy bison.
  • I assume that this project is simply a proof of concept; a project to generate one freak animal that would die, and the species would be extinct again.But what if it weren't?

    What possible place in the world would this species have? If we're truly talking about "bringing back" a species, we have to talk about releasing it into the environment.

    Now the environment has long since shaken out to equilibrium from the lack of mammoths, so introducing mammoths must necessarily take it out of equilibrium. Does anyone really thing we have any shot of predicting the impact?

    Let's say we generate a genetically viable population of 100 mammoths and release them into the wastes of Siberia. What if it is simply so that the conditions that led to their demise are still in effect?

  • Very carefully.
  • Don't they keep harping on the fact that a chimpanzee is something very close to 100% human, with only a tiny percentage of difference in the genome? How close to authentic can you get with 88% of the genome intact?

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