How extinct animals could be brought back from the dead Share using Email
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2023 8:12 pm
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2023 ... m-the-dead
From an Australian frog that swallowed its own eggs to woolly mammoths, scientists are getting ever closer to being able to bring long-lost species back from the dead. Millions of years ago thylacines, also known as Tasmanian tigers, were widespread across Australia. About the size of an American coyote, these dog-like creatures with stripes disappeared from the mainland around 2,000 years ago. They remained in Tasmania until the 1920s, when they were slaughtered by European colonisers who saw them as a threat to livestock.
"It was a human-driven extinction – European settlers came to Australia and brutally obliterated this animal," says Andrew Pask, a geneticist at the University of Melbourne.
Pask is leading a team of scientists who, together with "de-extinction" company Colossal Biosciences, aim to recreate the wolf-like creature and bring it back.
From an Australian frog that swallowed its own eggs to woolly mammoths, scientists are getting ever closer to being able to bring long-lost species back from the dead. Millions of years ago thylacines, also known as Tasmanian tigers, were widespread across Australia. About the size of an American coyote, these dog-like creatures with stripes disappeared from the mainland around 2,000 years ago. They remained in Tasmania until the 1920s, when they were slaughtered by European colonisers who saw them as a threat to livestock.
"It was a human-driven extinction – European settlers came to Australia and brutally obliterated this animal," says Andrew Pask, a geneticist at the University of Melbourne.
Pask is leading a team of scientists who, together with "de-extinction" company Colossal Biosciences, aim to recreate the wolf-like creature and bring it back.