New Russian Laboratory To Study Mammoth Cloning 45
An anonymous reader writes: While plans to clone a woolly mammoth are not new, a lab used in a joint effort by Russia and South Korea is. The new facility is devoted to studying extinct animal DNA in the hope of creating clones from the remains of animals found in the permafrost. IBtimes reports: "The Sakha facility has the world's largest collection of frozen ancient animal carcasses and remains, with more than 2,000 samples in its possession, including some that are tens of thousands years old, such as a mammoth discovered on the island of Maly Lyakhovsky; experts believe it may be more than 28,000 years old."
Putin got tired of riding bears (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Putin got tired of riding bears (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Putin got tired of riding bears (Score:4, Funny)
A first glance miss read of that made me think it was the first use of the required new language metaphor; "the mammoth in the room". In my mind similar to "the elephant in the room" but even more glaringly obvious.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, the US was already cloning elks [wikipedia.org] back in the 1980s.
Re: (Score:2)
Put Disney on the job: Pleistocene Park!
Re: (Score:2)
Please, you'd have to rent the capacity from the Russians to get to the moon in the first place. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To truly capitalize on mammoth transportation technology what we really need is the Mammoth Centipede.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:frontier of science (Score:5, Informative)
Mammoth is not really a problem. a) we got them extinct the first time (if these rumours are true) and b) they are just elephants. We are very able to get them extinct in Africa, so no problem with that.
Re:frontier of science (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, bringing back extinct megafauna with cloning and genetic engineering is no real worry.
It's the genetic engineering of microfauna that's more likely to go wrong and kill us all.
As long as this is limited to mammoth (Score:1)
Wait until they clone Putin or even better Stalin the Great.
I liked it better... (Score:2)
....when it was called "The Boys from Brazil".
Old joke cloned from hibernation (Score:5, Informative)
I knew I'd seen this: it was an April Fool's prank, in 1984. The paper has been cited repeatedly by foolish biology paper authors for the last 30 years.
http://hoaxes.org/af_database/... [hoaxes.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, well. Mad magazine joked once about a 5 bladed razor.
Re: (Score:1)
Al Jaffee joked about a 17 blade razor. Only 12 to go!
Re: (Score:2)
Only 11 blades to go [amazon.com].
Wow (Score:3)
The Sakha facility has the world's largest collection of frozen ancient animal carcasses and remains.....
I'd say that qualifies as cool.
Why? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Well finally! (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Seeing would be great. Smelling, on the other hand... I'm imagining elephant smell mixed with very large wet dog.
What about the most recent samples? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
eh, if Christian they're cool with up to 4004 + 2015 = 6019.
Also, the Jewish calendar has year 5775
Doing something just because it's cool (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's time we admit to ourselves that sometimes, we want scientists to do certain things simply because they're cool. That should count as a perfectly adequate reason, so that we can stop this silly game of pretending that we need to do something cool because we inexplicably started caring a lot about settling some very small and boring scientific question.
I see this a lot when people discuss manned missions to Mars. It's a popular idea, but only because it's cool and full of symbolism we like. It's not because people suddenly became nerds about the history of the Martian regolith, and unmanned missions will simply not adequately satisfy their burning curiosity. Of course, the Mars mission would cost an insane fortune. I'm all for cool things, and humanity is pretty rich, but not that rich. Cloning a mammoth, on the other hand... We might be able to afford that!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Cloning an extinct species may be an important technology. We are currently creating a mass extinction event, and may need/want to bring back some species we killed off. It might even be profitable or lifesaving, like producing a cure for an infection or Star Trek IV.
I don't think there will ever be a cure for Star Trek IV.
Another perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a very simple solution to his main argument against cloning mammoths: clone elephants first.
Re: (Score:3)
Money. It's about money.
People will pay a huge amount to see the first live mammoth. It captures the imagination in a way elephant or mouse or bird cloning just cannot compare to. I'm all for science advancement and in favor of careful study of biomes and being cautious, but none of those things grab headlines. The money that would pour into de-extinction development for a mammoth will be huge compared to any of the suggested other projects, and that's why cloning a mammoth is such a good thing. Getting the
Re: (Score:2)
Cool (Score:2)