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Ice Age mammoth cloning to start this year


Boffins are preparing a groundbreaking Jurassic Park style mammoth cloning experiment as early as this year. 

Dr Douglas McCauley said, this has moved from the domain of science fiction to science. We are closer now than ever before to being able to raise species from the dead. But it is important to understand what are and are not able to do now with de-extinction technology. The scientists working on the mammoth have said they should be able to start attempts at cloning this year.

This seemingly miraculous experiment will use the latest de-extinction technology that could raise several species back from the dead in the near future. But the most famous beast that may return within the next decade is the colossal 11 foot tall woolly mammoth. It is believed the huge mammals went extinct due to a combination of shrinking habitats and low birth rates. 

Dr Douglas McCauley, ecology, evolution and marine biology professor at The University of California in Santa Barbara, said boffins were closer than ever to bringing back extinct beasts. Dr McCauley later sensationally claimed some boffins could bring back the iconic wooly mammoth as early as this year. 
Boffins are still a long way from bringing back the long-dead dinosaurs. 

He said, In the case of a group trying to bring back the mammoth (using the living elephant as a surrogate), the product would not be a perfect copy a mammoth, but rather a hairy elephant or an elephant with some of these mammoth traits written into its genome.But the possible resurrection of the animal hinges on scientists being able to extract enough high quality DNA from specimens. The difficult task of finding useable DNA from ancient finds could give way in favour of bringing back more recently extinct species. 

Dr McCauley said, the real challenge is accessing high-quality DNA. This serves as the blueprint for how to build an animal. DNA gets damaged and grades over time. It gets increasingly difficult to get high quality sequences from animals that lived more than a few thousand years ago. Scientists successfully pulled DNA from a horse preserved in permafrost 700,000 years ago, but that was an amazing feat. Reaching too far back in time can also make it harder to find suitable surrogates. In my opinion, the best use of these tools would be to apply them to species that just went extinct or that have not yet gone extinct. Forget the mammoths, help the rhinos. By applying these techniques to species that just went extinct or that are on the verge of going extinct we stand a better chance of genetically resurrecting species with higher fidelity and reintroducing them successfully back into the wild.

Some scientists believe they can bring back mammoths as early as this year. 

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