Attempts to Clone Extinct Animals
Every time that a species dies, an important piece of our environment and our world dies with it. But science offers the hope of bringing some of these species back from extinction by using genes taken from the tissues of dead animals to grow new animals.
Several attempts have been made to regrow dead and extinct animals, so far with little success. The biggest goal of extinct species cloning would be to bring back to life a dinosaur or a mammoth. Attempts to extract intact DNA from the frozen bodies of Woolly Mammoths found in the Russian tundra have so far proved unsuccessful. There is currently a joint Russian - Japanese project working on the project. If DNA is extracted it would be inserted into the egg of a large mammal such as a cow or an elephant in the hopes that the surrogate mother could carry the baby mammoth to birth.There have also been attempts to reproduce a Tasmanian Tiger, which has been extinct for 65 years but attempts have so far been unsuccessful.
Now, scientists are taking steps to collect and preserve tissue from endangered animals in order to attempt clone them in the future, once the technology improves. When the last Pyrenan Ibex died, tissue samples were frozen immediately in the hopes of recreating the species at a later date.
The successes that have been achieved so far point to a bright future for cloning and hope for restoring lost species.
Every time that a species dies, an important piece of our environment and our world dies with it. But science offers the hope of bringing some of these species back from extinction by using genes taken from the tissues of dead animals to grow new animals.
Several attempts have been made to regrow dead and extinct animals, so far with little success. The biggest goal of extinct species cloning would be to bring back to life a dinosaur or a mammoth. Attempts to extract intact DNA from the frozen bodies of Woolly Mammoths found in the Russian tundra have so far proved unsuccessful. There is currently a joint Russian - Japanese project working on the project. If DNA is extracted it would be inserted into the egg of a large mammal such as a cow or an elephant in the hopes that the surrogate mother could carry the baby mammoth to birth.There have also been attempts to reproduce a Tasmanian Tiger, which has been extinct for 65 years but attempts have so far been unsuccessful.
Now, scientists are taking steps to collect and preserve tissue from endangered animals in order to attempt clone them in the future, once the technology improves. When the last Pyrenan Ibex died, tissue samples were frozen immediately in the hopes of recreating the species at a later date.
The successes that have been achieved so far point to a bright future for cloning and hope for restoring lost species.