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Science

The Lazarus Zoo: Resurrecting Extinct Species 46

Posted by timothy from the here-boy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Museum is attempting to resurrect the extinct Tasmanian tiger, using pup cells harvested from storage jars in alcohol from 70 years ago. The tiger was hunted to extinction, and has the ironic distinction of receiving legal protection the same year that the last of its kind (named Benjamin) died at the Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936. Other cloning attempts at conserving endangered species include the South Asian banteng on an Ohio farm, the world's last burcado (a Spanish mountain goat), a wild Asian ox called the gaur, and even a woolly mammoth." They're hoping for a live birth in 2010.
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The Lazarus Zoo: Resurrecting Extinct Species More

The Lazarus Zoo: Resurrecting Extinct Species

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  • Oh great (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mention "Woolly Mammoth" and "Goat" in the same story. They are just asking for it. :)

  • Hey! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Andy_R ( 114137 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2003 @11:33AM (#5591182) Homepage Journal
    I just had this GREAT idea for a movie! We could get Jeff Goldblum, and have this sort of theme park on an island somewhere, and... oh, DAMNIT!
    • Principal Skinner: "I'm not sad about losing my job, Bart. I'm working on a movie about a magical park where dinosaurs are brought back to life by genetic engineering. We'll call it 'Billy and the Clone-a-saurus'"

      Apu: "What? First you take a concept that's already been done, then you give it a name that nobody could possibly ever like..." "... biggest movie ever! ... best seller list for six months!..." "...HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK, SIR?....uh...I mean, thank you, come again."

  • Telomere damage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PD ( 9577 ) <slashdotlinux@pdrap.org> on Tuesday March 25, 2003 @11:34AM (#5591185) Homepage Journal
    Clones have short telomeres. But, do the offspring of clones have normal telomeres? Dolly had some lambs, so the answer should be known. If the offspring's telomeres are normal, that's good news because even if the clone has problems, the offspring might not have those problems.

    • Re:Telomere damage (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tsa ( 15680 )
      I was wondering about that too. The telomeres must be restored in the genitals somehow or the offspring would live shorter than their parents...
      By the way, I saw a tidbit about resurrecting the Tasmanian devil on TV last night, and there were some people that claimed they had seen live ones and are not convinced that it's really extinct. That would be great because if they are resurrected from the puppy cells from the jars you can bet that a live one comes wandering out of the forest just then. And then you
      • Oops, there's a devil in my post somewhere, of course I meant tiger...

      • Good News (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I was wondering about that too. The telomeres must be restored in the genitals somehow or the offspring would live shorter than their parents...

        I recently received an email from someone who has discovered a way to lengthen genitals. I'll forward it to the Australian Museum.

      • I have heard about this too but even though people have claimed to see them, no one has produced a shred of evidence that they still survive. Not a photograph, not a carcass, nothing. Even Sasquatch has more evidence for it and that is obviously a load of Malarky. But who knows? Other supposedly extinct species have been found again.
    • The deal is that most cells in the body lack telomerase which is an enzyme that replicates the ends of chromosomes properly (the usual DNA polymerases are 'built' to process circular molecules, so have difficulty with the linear ends of chromosomes.

      Cells that are very active / replicate a lot through an organisms lifetime (eg in the small intestine, the uterus) do contain telomerase. I don't know whether anyone has tried cloning cells from one of these areas of the body.

  • Cenozoic Park: Cloning the Tasmanian Tiger [slashdot.org], nearly a year old, much better than the 2 hour gap we were seeing.

    • Re:Its a dupe (n/t) (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The earlier story is already linked into the post, so your dupe is a dupe.
  • 'A Spanish mountain goat.'

    Right, but do we REALLYneed more goats? I mean, a goat is a goat is a goat.
    • Slashdotters are always opening their yaps without a second thought. If we wipe out a species due to habitat loss, hunting, whatever, its up to US to clean up our own mess. Biodiversity is valuable for its own sake, not just so some asshole can make a buck off it or create a new drug from a creature's ground up eyeballs.

  • Live birth in 2010 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Caractacus Potts ( 74726 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2003 @12:03PM (#5591410)
    Wow, with a seven-year gestation period, it's no wonder they went extinct.

  • On UK TV next week (Score:2, Informative)

    by amcguinn ( 549297 )

    Discovery Channel, 9p.m. 1st April in the UK.

    Cloning the Tasmanian Tiger [beeb.com]

    (It's been shown before).

  • Couldn't they have found something better to resurrect? Like unicorns? Or maybe that one female computer engineer that I keep hearing about... I've got this nagging feeling that one o'them is just mythical, though.
  • Embryonic growth involves a complicated, precisely timed, and crucial exchange of regulatory signals between embryo and mother. The chances of accomplishing this without any living relatives (same genus) are vanishingly small. Even getting the right regulatory proteins to kick the process off in the "egg" sounds impossible. I don't believe this will work.

  • Big F*cking Deal - Here's why this is not smart. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RedCard ( 302122 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2003 @04:35PM (#5593759)
    Here are the facts.

    1) Most species are rare. Very few species can be considered to be common.
    2) Most species have ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS be rare.
    3) Rarity is not something that is special in and of itself.
    4) Extinctions have been happening since the dawn of time.
    5) If a species is extinct, there's most always a reason for it. What has changed that would allow them to survive now?

    Conservation is VERY important, but our time and effort would be much better served by preserving what we have, not trying to undo what we have done. What's done is done. Concentrate on the present.

    WE MUST SOLVE THE PROBLEMS THAT CAUSE HUMANS TO DRIVE SPECIES TO EXTINCTION, THEN AND ONLY THEN SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT SPECIES THAT WE HAVE LOST.

    Rabid conservationists, please flame away. I'll reply, don't you worry.
    • Think of the technique and other knowledge that will be garnered from this. It's far more than just resurrecting species.
    • the difference is that this was an unnatural exticntion. it was the result of the actions taken by man.
      • And what would you say to those that want to clone the wooly mammoth?

        Ressurrecting animals species is a whiz-bang tech demo, but nothing else.

        This is a futile exercise. Genetic stochastic effects would drive a small population to extinction.
        See my response "Re:False dilemna" to jensend's post "False dilemna" below for a further explanation.
    • You seem to assume that any efforts at resurrecting extinct species will either prevent the success of or take resources away from efforts to minimize human contributions to future species loss. This is probably not the case.

      It's true enough that it is no substitute for working to prevent further human-caused extinction, but I doubt anyone seriously thought it would be.
      • No, they do not prevent the success of efforts to prevent species loss via human contribution, but (and this is a big but) they do the following:
        1. Divert monetary flow from said studies/programs
        2. Divert scientific/intellectual participation in said studies/programs
        3. Give firepower to those who view preservation-in-a-jar as a viable way of keeping species 'present'
        4. Ignore or discard the fact that once an animal is removed from a habitat to an artificial setting, neither the animal nor the habitat can ever

        • Divert monetary flow from said studies/programs

          Divert scientific/intellectual participation in said studies/programs

          How about some specific examples of money or mindshare which was going to go into preservation of existing species but went into resurrecting extinct species instead? I don't think you have any. The two issues are not connected in those ways. It's like saying "Open source software should not be developed because there are people starving in Africa, and open source efforts are draining m

  • Megatherium (Score:3, Interesting)

    by texchanchan ( 471739 ) <ccrowley@gmail . c om> on Tuesday March 25, 2003 @05:21PM (#5594207)
    I want the giant sloth [ucsb.edu] back.

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