Bits of Tassie Tiger Brought Back from Extinction 197
zerobeat writes "Scientists from Melbourne, Australia have managed to resurrect the gene responsible for the development of cartilage and bone from the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger. The gene was expressed in a mouse embryo so the full reincarnation of a full Tassie Tiger is a long way off. You can listen to an MP3 of ABC Australia's Robyn Williams discussing the results with the lead scientists. This is the first time DNA from an extinct species has been made to live again in a live animal."
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Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Brings to mind Jurassic Park (Score:4, Insightful)
1933 Last wild Thylacine captured
1936 Last Thylacine in captivity dies
1936 Thylacine added to list of protected wildlife
1953 DNA discovered
Given that DNA and its chemical structure was unknown in the 1930s - when it really mattered - they could not have been choosing to use alcohol because it did not degrade DNA. Interesting story but no banana.
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Yeah, but "bits"? (Score:2)
Kinda reminds me of referring to the Internet backbone as "pipes."
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No. The Tasmanian Tiger became extinct in the 1930s. We have samples taken from freshly dead corpses and preserved in laboratories. Not fossilised for 65 million years.>P? Anyway, Crichton's "plot" was" wild animals escaper, kill people, and finally some survivors escape. The plot could have been exactly the same with tigers, vampire bats, anacondas, or for thta matter, robots (like Westworld, an e
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Come on. People write books. Those books must be categorized in order to sell. There's no great conspiracy trying to ruin the science fiction genre and subjugate your reading habits. Take off the tinfoil hat.
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If a Conan novel had a small piece about metallurgy while some blacksmith was forging a new sword for the hero, would that make it a science fiction book?
How about if we had a novel about an industrial chemist in the 1970s, where we cut between his work in zinc production and his failure to find a woman fascinated by zinc. Would that be a science fiction book?
No, we use science fiction as a shorthand for futuristic fiction. The science in just about every science fiction work has bee
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Greg Bear
Kim Stanley Robinson
Alastair Reynolds
But all of these writers, with Crichton and just about every other sci
Eeek! (Score:3, Interesting)
On a more serious note, it would be fascinating if they could bring back a few recently extinct species. DNA degrades quite a bit over time though, so any hopes of a real life 'Jurassic Park' are probably going to remain science fiction forever.
Re:Eeek! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Eeek! (Score:4, Informative)
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First off, DNA degrades, but the most successful DNA sequencing technique (Craig Venter's) does not rely on having intact DNA - just enough snippets that can be reassembled.
Secondly, while it'd be nice to recreate a DNA-authentic T-Rex/whatever, I'm sure that most people would be plenty satisified to go to a monster park full of any flesh and blood beasts that looked close enough. Scient
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Go easy on me if this is a stupid quest
The Answer is Yes, Check out Neanderthal (Score:2, Informative)
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I suspect it will be possible to bring some back.
When they do I hope they are bright pink with neon spots.
You know, just to screw with everybody.
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A unix system! (Score:3, Funny)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics [wikipedia.org]
And all will be just fine... (Score:4, Funny)
until some renegade security geek disables the electric fence, and T-Rex's start eating attorneys everywhere...
oh wait...let 'em run free then
Why are we even defending large predators? (Score:3, Funny)
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I guess you're at least partially jesting, but just in case anyone's interested:
Large predators (usually apex predators [wikipedia.org]) play an important role in regulating ecosystems, by controlling the number of herbivores and/or smaller predators. As well as weeding out sick/weak individuals (whether this is a good thing or not depends on point of view), they act as feedback control. For example, an increase in (e.g.) gazelles results in an increase in (e.g.) lions, which in turn stops the increase in gazelles. This
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Re:Why are we even defending large predators? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Cloned marsupia (Score:2)
You're toying with powerful forces here (Score:5, Funny)
Tassie Tiger = next Ubuntu? (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine my surprise. . .
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Quick, someone squat those domains.
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Coming to theaters.... (Score:3, Funny)
Good thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Typo.....? (Score:3, Funny)
-Please, oh please, let that be a misspelling of the Robin Williams I know.
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I just had a funny mental image of the hyperactive comedian Robin Williams interviewing a scientist about this sort of thing. If you've ever seen his routines, you'd know what I mean.....
Well it worked for Ripley (Score:2)
Resurrecting ancient extinct species... (Score:2)
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By the 30s there weren't many left, and only in Tasmania, and we finished them off by placing bounties on them to keep them from attacking sheep. Not to mention the ever-growing destruction of habitat by our farming efforts, competition with the dogs we brought with
Why not try and capture one first? (Score:2)
I'm perplexed as to why this got the green light. Can anyone clue me in?
Don't believe the Wiki! (Score:3, Informative)
Southwest Tasmania though is home to one of the largest protected wilderness sites on Earth and it's possible that a small population has survived. Highly doubtful though.
If we brought some back there would theoretically be an ecosystem for them. However that ecosystem has evolved 80 years without them. Reintroduction could be very harmful.
A nice oddity in a large zoo enclosure
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Alternative headline (Score:2)
It's Just Wrong... (Score:2)
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No ordinary mouse (Score:2)
Well, that's no ordinary mouse.
Ohh.
That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
You tit! I soiled my armor I was so scared!
Look, that mouse has got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
No Mod Up for Vague Reference (Score:2)
I want a quagga (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing that the wikipedia article doesn't mention: Zebras are essentially a striped donkey, but they (and their hybrids) are generally vicious and impossible to break and train. The Quagga was an exception: It domesticated very nicely.
Others that would be fun to bring back:
- Dodo.
- Passenger Pigeon. (If only for the humor of having the eastern states paved in pigeon droppings twice a year as the sky-obscuring migration goes through.)
Both were apparently very tasty.
Re:First Save the ones on the verge of extinction (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First Save the ones on the verge of extinction (Score:5, Funny)
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Not trolling here, just wish this ethanol kick would end because it isn't feasible. Just look at the numbers [umn.edu].
Now back to the topic at hand
Re:First Save the ones on the verge of extinction (Score:5, Insightful)
Few animals go extinct in a way that means they could be realistically revived. A shame, but true, so that would be a losing strategy.
Lets look at a recent example, the baiji dolphin. It is now functionally, if not totally, extinct, and a major part of the cause was the fact that their habitat is no longer what it used to be, i.e a vast, silty, *quiet* river. Now it's a vast, crowded, polluted river.
Hunting was a problem too, but wouldn't have been had not the environment changed so much (meaning if there were less humans utilizing the river). They've been hunted for thousands of years and only became endangered after the wide scale industrialization of the Yangtze River.
Same for the woolly mammoth. As interesting and challenging as the recreation of that species is (and possible too, there are still frozen mammoths being excavated with intact testicles). The big problem is that they are huge creates whose habitat is long gone. Where would they go if we made them again?
The Tasmanian Tiger is a special case, being rendered extinct fairly recently, and having it's habitat still almost entirely intact.
As for saving the animals in the first place, got a few trillion dollers to pay off the poverty line hugging people that are being paid pennies to actually go out and cut down habitats to make rich people richer? Cos I haven't.
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By culture I'm referring to anything that is passed on from parent to child via teaching (observation). Animal calls are an example of this.
- John
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A certain whale song, for instance, may be lost forever... Although other whale songs would appear in its place. It would be similar to wiping out humans, and having them start again. We might eventually reach a similar stage of culture to what we have now, but it would hardly be identical... and something most definitely would be lost.
- John
A zoo (Score:2)
I'd certainly like to see a live woolly mammoth walking around
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Might as well do some CGI of them and show movies to people.
Also, that's some disturbing sig you've got there
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Reality check here, they aren't trying to create a means to save animals that go extinct. It wouldn't work anyway, because many creatures require habitat that dissapears, That being what makes them go extinct in the first place.
Few animals go extinct in a way that means they could be realistically revived. A shame, but true, so that would be a losing strategy.
Then there was the Passenger Pigeon which didn't die due to loss of habitat, but rather over hunting as cheap meat. If they could be resurrected, I don't think they would have a problem thriving if a large population can be generated before releasing them into the wild.
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So, um, they'd be hunted back to extinction as cheap meat again?
In that case the mechanism that drove them to extinction is still present.
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So, um, they'd be hunted back to extinction as cheap meat again?
In that case the mechanism that drove them to extinction is still present.
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They would lead the way for the previous mythic animal Zoo.
Unicorn: It's what's for dinner.
The first person to created a miniature Unicorn will sell one to every father with a daughter the next day.
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But we are trying to chop it down as fast as we can.
Re:First Save the ones on the verge of extinction (Score:4, Funny)
Oh @#$%@!!! no!
The last thing I want is a house pet that sheds a wool blanket twice a year, has tusks that are nearly equal its body length and has the disposition of a Chihuahua.
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"Hey, careful out there in the back yard... you might step in a... oh... I'm sorry. The hose is over there."
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The Mammoths habitat doesn't exist any more. I realise it existed at the time, but it doesn't now. Also man didn't kill them all off, it was the end of the ice age that did for them finally, we just cleared the populations in a lot of regions.
Others (when we're the cause) can be hunting that leaves the habitat intact, but define 'intact'. The
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Humans do two things. First, we show up and cause similar situations, and then act like our existence is somehow "bad" because it causes change in the world. Second, we watch species natural
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
They need to eat constantly, because they get hardly any benefit from eating bamboo shoots, which they are unable to digest properly.
But they're too damn picky to eat anything but bamboo.
Anything that isn't willing to eat food capable of keeping it alive reliably deserves to die out, no matter how cute and cuddly it is.
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Why do you think we kept cats around for so long?
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Because humans are arrogant and many of them believe that we are directly responsible for what happens to everything on the planet. That if an animal goes extinct we are to blame and have some moral responsibility to try to save the sp
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But if one day lions were to polish off the last of the zebra, would it be any different?
We are just the only creatures on the planet capable of feeling guilty for our evolutionary success. If the ebola virus were to gain some ability that enabled it to infect all living humans, I very much doubt that it would leave the last 100 or so of us alive, keep us in zoos and initiate international breeding programmes.
At what point did the h
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
Oopsies! That was supposed to read as "I get as sentimental about the poor [insert favoured endangered species here] as the next guy", except I used greater than and less than symbols in the original which was obviously filtered by the slashcode. For the record, I am, *in no way*, suggesting that we hunt the poor to extinction
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Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
You might be able to use distant relatives to eventually create some sort of Thylacine cross. However the Thylacine is not related to either tigers or wolves [wikipedia.org] though it went by the name Tasmanian Tiger or Wolf--it is closer in relation to the Tasmanian Devil. I can't think of why you want to rekindle another, LARGER carnivorous creature with a nasty temper.
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To ignore our responsiblity in this would be our folly and cause our eventual demise.
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Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as the "poster children", I think there is still good reason to preserve them for their own sake. See how interested people are now in the Tasmanian Tiger which isn't even that different looking to other extant species... Don't you think it'd be a shame if the next generation of children grow up in a world where large species like Pandas, Rhinos, Elephants, Gorillas etc only exist as stuffed specimens in museums? In fact I'm sure we've already all but irrecoverably ensured the demise of that particular group. We're essentially at the stage where the Tasmanian Tiger was only known from a few examples in zoos and rumored sightings in the wild, until eventually all the zoo specimens had died too.
We're currently in the middle of what is probably the largest and quickest de-speciation "extinction event" the planet has ever known - something that makes the Permian extinction look like a non-event. From the timescale perspective of millions (or tens/hundreds of millions) of years this will only be an intersting point way back in history that our descendents (if our genetic lineagee survives that long) may ponder about, but on the human timescale of our own lifetime, and that of our children and grandchildren, it sure seems a shame to be taking such a giant shit in our own back yard.
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The Thylacine's habitat is still largely intact, and there have been numerous "sightings" of them over the years, but no hard evidence. It is possible that a small colony of Thylacines have survived, given the elusive nature of the creature in the first place, but i
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