Extinct animals making a comeback
Just because a species is as dead as, errr, a dodo doesn't mean they will be gone forever.
New Scientist has has come up with a top ten of creatures who are close to bringing brought back to life thanks to advances in DNA technology.
It doesn't include dinosaurs as their genetic information is pretty hard to come by after millions of years.
But there are some amazing animals just waiting in the wings for an encore.
1. Neanderthal: Extinct: 25,000 years ago.
A draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome should be published sometime this year by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Humans would make the ideal surrogates.
2. Sabre-toothed tiger: Extinct: 10,000 years ago
There are some spectacularly preserved sabre-toothed specimens from the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, and lions are close enough to be surrogates.
3. Short-faced bear: Extinct: 11,000 years ago
This towering beast would dwarf the world's largest living land carnivore, the polar bear, stanidng a third taller when standing upright, and it weighed up to a tonne. Recovering its DNA should be possible as there are specimens encased in permafrost.
4. Tasmanian tiger: Extinct: 1936
The last Tasmanian tiger died in Hobart Zoo in 1936 which means there are well preserved tissues to obtain good-quality DNA. The tasmanian devil would make good surrogate.
5. Glyptodon: Extinct: 11,000 years ago
The Volkswagen Beetle-sized "colossal" armadillo, with its spiky, club-like tail, once rumbled across the South American countryside, and some might fancy seeing it do so again.
6. Dodo: Extinct: AD1690
In 2002 geneticists at Oxford University got permission to cut into the world's best-preserved dodo specimen, a foot bone - complete with skin and feathers - held under lock and key at the university's Museum of Natural History.
7. Woolly rhinoceros: Extinct: 10,000 years ago
As with the mammoth, there are plenty of specimens preserved in permafrost, and the availability of hair, horns and hooves is a big plus. These tissues can be cleaned up to release an abundance of near-pure rhino DNA.
8. Giant ground sloth: Extinct: 8,000 years ago
This giant stood around six metres tall and is estimated to have weighed a whopping four tonnes. The sloth's relatively recent extinction means several specimens have been found with hair, an excellent source of DNA.
9. Irish elk: Extinct: 7,700 years ago
A typical male stood more than two metres tall at the shoulder and sported antlers 12 feet wide. It is actually a deer rather than an elk and its closest living relative is the much smaller fallow deer.
10. Moa: Extinct: AD 1500
There is plenty of DNA to be found for this flightless bird, which is similar to an ostrich, in well-preserved bones and even eggs in caves across New Zealand.
Weird Science Facoid: A koala bear sleeps 22 hours of every day. I'm jealous...
Join the Weird Science Facebook group here, or follow us on Twitter here or by searching for weirdsciblog.
Want to be sent the 'best' of the Weird Sci Blog every month? Then sign up for Weird News - a newsletter containing more info about the subjects we cover, plus some extra stuff that didn't make the blog. Interested? Subscribe by e-mailing wscience@me.com with the title 'count me in' and we'll do the rest.
Older/Newer
4 Comments
Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
Odd that the mammoth didn't make the list.
It would be truly fascinating to see some of these creatures resurrected. I hope one day to be able go on Safari in a pleistocene park populated with creatures like this!
huh! well, i certainly would like to see a sabre-tooth in a zoo, or even in the wild. but I'm not so sure about the Neanderthal. what if they are the same as us? or what if we make some kind of monster? i don't know.
If they do come up with technology like that they could also ressurect people like Abraham Lincon, Elizabeth the 1, Nepolian, and John Lennon.
Thanks for the relevante information. I have to agree and disagree about some points here