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Could De-evolution save the climate?
Pleistocene Park and bringing back the Mammoth to trap carbon
AN honorable Jurassic Park? Scientists and businessmen with a conscience? What of sideways world is this?
I’ll admit I was massively skeptical when I ran across the 2022 award winning documentary a couple of months ago. But so far, the science looks like it is holding up and maybe even accelerating.
There have been talks of reengineering a woolly mammoth since I was in middle school. But what seemed like science fiction then is rapidly becoming reality.
The Science of Creating Life
Last week a Dallas based biotech company, Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences, announced that it had successfully converted cells from an Asian elephant into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). This is HUGE because pluripotent cells can be anything they want or need to be.
Which means that there are only a few more steps before we might be seeing the first woolly mammoth resurrected. Between now and then, the stem cells need to be turned into egg and sperm cells; and genetic traits associated with the mammoth need to be selected for.
Also, gestation would need to be successful. Not exactly a simple list, but certainly more doable than a dinosaur.
While not an official partner, Colossal Labs does have a relationship with the park intended to house the mammoths should they ever be born. The two have been working together to harvest frozen DNA from mammoths found in the permafrost.
Pleistocene Park & the Wooly Mammoth
TThe hypothesis was simple: reverse the ecosystem shift which occurred 10,000 years ago; increase the animal density by artificially introducing herbivores to the arctic and maintaining their existence to promote the re-establishment of historic grasslands. Hopefully resulting in a sustainably productive ecosystem that mirrored that at the end of Pleistocene which could theoretically keep the permafrost from melting.
It was a dream in 1996 when Pleistocene Park was first established but it has slowly been becoming a reality as Sergei and Nikita Zimov scour the planet for…
