The famous Jurassic Park film series has left many children passionate about dinosaurs, including myself. From the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex to the colossal Seismosaurus, the awe-inspiring size and power of these creatures have sparked our imaginations, and made us wonder what it would be like to encounter them in real life.
Are we able to recover extinct species? With advancements in technology and scientific understanding, we do see some hope for the possibility of de-extinction (a process of recovering extinct creatures).
How is De-Extinction Possible?
Bioengineering used to manipulate DNA and genomes in an organism has made de-extinction possible. If the DNA of an extinct species is recovered, it can be transferred to an empty egg cell (nucleus removed) extracted from a donor and cloned. However, modern cloning uses egg cells from exactly the same species, so it’s never possible to fully “replicate” extinct animals, for we cannot find living cells of extinct species. In other words, the so-called “de-extinction” does not essentially revive the original purebred species, but rather a hybrid of the extinct animal and its contemporary evolutionary relative.
Attempts to Recover the Woolly Mammoth
In the 2010s, you might have heard the groundbreaking news that scientists have successfully sequenced the DNA of the woolly mammoth, and prepared to recover these prehistoric elephants. Scientists drilled out tiny samples from the molar of mammoth fossils and tried to solve the DNA puzzle, as it has degraded into many billions of short, fragmented sequences. The DNA was about 700,000 years old - a little younger than the world's oldest DNA sequenced from a 750,000-year-old horse.
Though the DNA was sequenced a long time ago, ten years later, we still haven’t heard of any great breakthroughs in recovering the woolly mammoth. Programs like the “Woolly Mammoth Revival Project”, which aims to manipulate the genome of Asian elephants to resemble the genome of woolly mammoth, is controversial due to moral and ecological concerns. The introduction of a new and powerful species into the ecosystem might bring potentially devastating changes and break-downs of food chains. Meanwhile, unsuccessful experiments would produce defective creatures and thus threaten animal rights. This can be seen in the case where a bucardo, ‘de-extincted’ in 2003, suffered great pain and died early because of faulty lungs.
Due to the reasons stated above, the de-extinction of woolly mammoths ended up with nothing definite. However, scientists are still working on the revival of mammoths, and asserted that “mammophants” could be produced 10 years later. Well, let’s wait and see what will happen in 2034.
Any Hope for Reviving Dinosaurs?
In the case of woolly mammoths, we do see the hope of de-extinction, because we have plenty of well-preserved fossils in the permafrost and access to elephant DNA, the living relatives of mammoths. However, for dinosaurs:
1. Available DNA sources ❌: Dinosaurs died thousands of millions of years ago. As organic molecules, their DNA has degraded.
2. Evolutionary Relatives ✅and ❌:
We do have reptiles today, but lizards are unlikely to reproduce a 10m dino.
3. Bioengineering Techniques ✅: “A report of preserved fragments of nuclei and chromatin in a fossilized femur of a 125-million-year-old Caudipteryx dinosaur elicits skepticism.”
We can extract DNA from dinosaurs, but professors don’t believe in their authenticity (poor dinosaurs).
Conclusion
As of right now, it is unfortunately impossible to recover dinosaurs, let alone build a real-life Jurassic Park. However, you never know what will be discovered and unearthed in the future. More importantly, no matter whether these projects are ultimately successful, the scientific and public discussion on de-extinction has promoted productive development in bioengineering, and prompted questions concerning how far we should be allowed to interfere with nature.
Works Cited
Asu.edu. (2021). Revive & Restore’s Woolly Mammoth Revival Project | Embryo Project Encyclopedia. [online] Available at: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/revive-restores-woolly-mammoth-revival-project [Accessed 14 Apr. 2024].
Colossal. (2022). How De-Extinction Works: Step-by-Step Process - Colossal. [online] Available at: https://colossal.com/how-de-extinction-works/ [Accessed 14 Apr. 2024].
Odenbaugh, J. (2023). Philosophy and ethics of de-extinction. Cambridge prisms. Extinction, [online] 1. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/ext.2023.4.
Science.org. (2021). Mammoth molars yield the oldest DNA ever sequenced. [online] Available at: https://www.science.org/content/article/mammoth-molars-yield-oldest-dna-ever-sequenced [Accessed 14 Apr. 2024].
Tenn, C. (2021). Paleontologists Find Possible Dinosaur DNA. [online] The Scientist Magazine®. Available at: https://www.the-scientist.com/paleontologists-find-possible-dinosaur-dna-69346 [Accessed 14 Apr. 2024].
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