In a unique and surprising announcement, scientists revealed that they are now planning to bring back to life certain animals which have been extinct for thousands of years including Woolly Mammoth.
Many questions have been raised and a huge debate kicked off on social media since the announcement of the $15 million plan was suggested by geneticists, led by Harvard Medical School's George Church. However, the big question remains: “How is it even possible?”
Geneticists, led by Harvard Medical School's George Church, aim to bring the woolly mammoth, which disappeared 4,000 years ago, back to life.
— CNN (@CNN) September 15, 2021
The efforts got a major boost on Monday with the announcement of a $15 million investment. https://t.co/08aVLPXyY5
Scientists showed huge ambition toward this plan as they most likely to start their trial with Woolly Mammoth, which disappeared 4,000 years ago, adding that it is possible to collect extinct animals’ DNA using bones and carcasses of long-dead animals.
Moreover, they revealed that their mission is not particularly restricted to bringing woolly mammoths to life, but to make, through genetic engineering, a living, walking elephant-mammoth hybrid that would be visually indistinguishable from its extinct forerunner.
What’s the point of creating them when the planet is on fire!!! Firm raises $15m to bring back woolly mammoth from extinction https://t.co/q1tuQmht08
— Bonnie Laila? (@bonnielaila) September 16, 2021
The tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who with Church has co-founded Colossal, a bioscience and genetics company to back the project said: "Our goal is to have our first calves in the next four to six years."
On the other hand, some social media users have blasted the idea saying it would be more important to protect nowadays’ animals which are in danger of being extinct using this amount of money. While another person couldn’t absorb the idea said: “It doesn’t make any sense!.”
How about saving the animals we have from extinction because of man made climate crisis!? I’m not against this per se but I am very against people destroying our precious planet & all the species that are being made extinct! https://t.co/iY8nfrZ7zK
— Dawn Benson (@dawnbensonart) September 16, 2021
About Woolly Mammoth:
The woolly mammoth is a species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene.
The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in East Asia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. DNA studies show that the Columbian mammoth was a hybrid between woolly mammoths and another lineage descended from steppe mammoths.
