Scientists to bring 300,000-year-old wooly mammoth back to life in four years
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The Newz Radar
The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was a legendary species of mammoth that went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago.
They were one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. They were roughly the same size as African elephants, with males reaching shoulder heights between 2.7-3.4 metre. It’s said they coexisted with early humans, who used their bones and tusks to make tools, art, and dwellings.
Woolly mammoths roamed the cold tundra of Europe, Asia, and North America from about 300,000 years ago up until about 10,000 years ago.
All that we know about them comes from fossils, skeletal remains, and frozen specimens that were found in places across the planet by researchers and archaeologists.But all that might change in the years to come.
In 2021, it was widely reported that a company named Colossal Biosciences was channeling millions of dollars in an effort to resurrect the long-extinct animal.
While it remained unclear what the company planned to do, many said the scientists would most likely take an approach that was made popular by Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster ‘Jurassic Park’.
Reports said their scientists started using genetic science to bring the mastodon back to life once more. DNA sequencing innovators George Church and Harvard Boffin were excited since 2021 to bring back the pre-historic creature.
The plan, explained in the most basic way, is for the scientists to take mammoth genetics and put them into existing Asian elephants, the mammoth’s closest modern-day relative.
In July, it was reported that Colossal Biosciences had already started working on a $74 million genetics project to recreate the extinct mastodon.
