Jurassic Park for Real? - Cloning Extinct Animals

The project is headed by evolutionary biologist Michael Archer, dean of science at the University of New South Wales in Australia. In collaboration with colleagues at Australian universities and U.S. genetics labs, Archer hoped to bring this carnivourous marsupial back from extinction using DNA from an infant female preserved in alcohol since 1866.

Part of the difficulty lies in restoring the degraded DNA, in fact Archer's first team failed to extract quality DNA from the infant female and the project was scrapped in February 2005. But with a new team, new technology and a new strategy to recover genes from the bones and teeth of thylacines in museum specimens the project was revived again in October 2005.

If Archer's new team can figure out how to restore degraded DNA there is a chance the Tasmanian tiger could live again. What's next...the Woolly Mammoth? Actually that's not so far fetched...in fact there are projects underway to clone the mammoth as well as the Spanish bucardo goat.

In 1999, French polar explorer Bernard Buigues and mammoth experts Dick Mol and Larry Agenbroad unearthed a 23,000 pound block of permafrost containing the remains of a woolly mammoth near the Bolchaya Balakhnya River in Siberia.

Scientists were hopeful that the block of frozen earth would yield an intact mammoth carcass. The possibility led a number of genetic research facilities around the world to propose extracting DNA from the soft tissues of the extinct creature with the goal of cloning it back to life.

Unfortunately for those scientists interested in cloning the mammoth there was very little soft tissue and bone remaining. As in the case of the Tasmanian tiger there was just too little quality DNA to give cloning much of a chance.

But if scientists can discover a technique to restore degraded DNA the first major hurdle in cloning the mammoth will be overcome. That would just leave several other unknown factors including the gestation period of the mammoth. Will it match that of the Asian elephant, the mammoth's closest living relative? Not to mention there is a bit of a size difference between the woolly mammoth and the Asian elephant; what kind of problems will this cause for the surrogate mother?

All in all the odds are currently stacked against a successful clone, but with the ever expanding developments in genetics some day in the next 20-30 years there might just be woolly mammoth rides at your local zoo.

A Thank you to the fine people of Squidoo for choosing this lens as Lens of the Day on September 28th 2006 (Holy Moley has it been that long?) And to the many readers who have graced this lens with their curiosity - may you all be cloned and visit again, and again.