Not that I agree so much with your idea, it would be a good case study in nature vs. nurture. Was he that evil naturally, or was it a result of the environment he grew up in? Would a Hitler clone, with much improved quality of life, grow up with the same genocidal, and megalomania tendencies?

No !

since the cold destroys DNA, but it worked with a mouse frozen for 16 years, they just need a wooly mammoth carcass frozen for 16 years...................

somehow I doubt this will work, plus they are assuming the dead mammoth, had healthy cells when it died......

now how the heck to I get back to newsvine from this awful sister site....

You don't need "healthy" cells. You just need intact DNA strands. I think what you are saying is that they have to hope that the animal was genetically healthy.

yes, that's what I meant, to suggest the irony, that it was the DNA that caused the sample mammoths death, won't work to create a live one...

It will probably happen - it's just a matter of time.

You are an idiot. I feel somehow less intelligent for even having read your comment...

"Science is of value because it CAN produce SOMETHING..." (a quote from a famous debate between a religious zealot and a non-theist)

Its that type of attitude that depresses me. Why is it that people are so afraid to learn? (Directed at halli, not 99)

Wrong. Mammoths only quite recently went extinct. The Pyramids were around before the last mammoth died away. 10,000 years ago? More like 4000 years ago.

I recall reading there were mammoths about 4000 years ago but they very small. Sort of the pachyderm equivalent of a Shetland pony as compared to a horse. I wonder how old the tissue is that they aim to use? A smaller mammoth fetus might be easier for an elephant to carry to term.

I'm thinking it is going to be a VERY expensive way to get meat.

Do you mean "Wally Mammoths" or "Woolly Mammoths"?

Mmmm... mammoth burgers...

We don't know if nature was the cause of extinction for this species or if it was human over-hunting. If humans are to blame, then I think we have an obligation to use our technology to bring them back. Even if it was a natural extinction, humans and mammoths lived together about 10,000 years ago without any issues (except from the mammoth's point of view).

Either way, it does beg the question of what would we DO with it? Somebody is going to have to taje care of it!

Well, if the population gets out of control, we can always open up a Wolly Mammoth hunting season. I am sure Barnum and Bailey's could make some loot off of Wolly Mammoth rides as well.

Wrong. Mammoths were still alive at least after Mesopotamia, and quite possibly after early Egypt. Even their relative the mastadon only went extinct about 1000 years ago. Their deaths were far from natural: although climate change was a big factor, we were responsiple for the end result: extinction.

There is no reward without risk!

Extincted? Okay, I'll let that go... but consider that cloning one mammoth will be a tremendous learning experience, and provide increased interest in scientific research for decades to come. You can't pontificate on "we don't know what it'll do" without providing some worst case scenarios. This would be a far cry from creating a viable breeding population (they can't all be clones of the same "parent"). And even so, some scientists have theorized that a wild population could survive in the Siberian tundra where we're getting all these frozen specimens now; not a lot of people live there.

Wild animals aren't killing machines, like they are portrayed in some movies. Yes, they can be dangerous, but so can the neighbor's pit bull. People in countries all over the world deal with the reality of crocodiles, lions, sharks, etc... close to the places they live and play every day.

I would love to see a mammoth, and a thylacine, and a dodo, and a pterasaur, and, yes, a T. Rex (wouldn't advocate putting that last one into the wild, though).

I know for sure I'M not cleaning up after that thing!

randomB- I don't think I'd put the pterasuar in the wild either. Flying predator with a 35 foot wingspan?

Maybe we should cure cancer first??

RGrant, as for the pterosaur, I'd agree that the wild wouldn't be the right place for it, too, but not for the same reason. I think most scientists beleive pterosaurs were strictly fish eaters, but their effect on native populations of birds and fish would likely be pretty destructive.

It's bad enough when people mess with the ecosystem by releasing unwanted exotic pets into the wild, which has caused many disasters (rabbits in Australia, etc.) Now they want to bring back long dead animals. How ridiculous. I admit that if they could bring back a Neanderthal, that might be really interesting.

I was thinking the exact same thing, maybe thats not such a good idea

It can't be done with existing technology. The mammoth might work ONLY because we have a closely related surrogate in the elephant to provide eggs. We don't know how to clone anything from DNA without an egg.

Details, details, so we get a mammoth in five years and Jurassic Park in ten years. WHOOOPEEE!

Sign me up! Imago!

The major difference would be that the current proposal involves working from frozen tissue not from fossilized bones or from blood cells crystalized inside of a mosquito stuck amber.

Who'd pay for it? Brining back a single mammoth, an animal which only very recently went extinct, have living relatives to use for embryo gestation, and is from an environment not so different from today, will cost millions of dollars to do, maybe even tens of millions or more. And that's just bringing it back, not bothering with the logsistics of caring for it, providing an environment for it (it'll probably just be studied for all its natural life. Not a plesant living arrangment). And still, that's only ONE mammoth: more would cost a large fortune.

And Jurrasic Park made things sound much simpler than they really are. For example, in the book, they claimed to have the ability to alter chromosmes to affect the gender of the animal that they're cloning. Although that sounds perfectly plausible, we still aren't able to do it in real life yet, and some say that it wouldn't be able to be utilized in a real cloning senario because the process of changing an X chromosme to a Y chromosome may damage the genetic structure too much.

Another thing is how they got the DNA in the book: mosquitos. While it's certainly a clever idea, it probably wouldn't work, as enzymes in most mosquitoes break down DNA as soon as it enters their body, and not only that, you would need a LOT of blood to get a full DNA sample needed for cloning, so unless you have 1000 mosquitos that conviniently have perfectly preserved dinosaur DNA of the same species, you won't be able to bring back a perfect copy of the animal. That said, you could use fragments and mix them in with DNA of genetically similar animals to create an animal SIMILAR to a dinosaur (if it even survives), but that wouldn't really be the same.

Finally, the biggest question: how are you going to take care of these things? In the novel, it shows that the company that made the Dinosaurs, Ingen, didn't know what to feed their dinosaurs, and so they got sick (like the triceratops in the film). A doomsday senario that is portrayed in the book and film is unlikely, as we would be hard pressed to bring back even a single dinosaur, let alone enough of them to make a breeding population, but suppose it does happen? It'd be game over. And what would we do with our dinosaur? Study it? Okay, fair enough, but now that you've studied it, what are you going to do with this god-like technology? Never use it again? That's unlikely. The book was satrical in how the first thing they did with the dinosaurs when they brought them back to life was try to make a profit out of them. While I can't see any company doing that, it does raise other questions that were raised in the book: Dino pets? Biological weapons? Or the biggest of all, reintroduction into the ecosystem? Assuming this is WAY in the future, and that cloning technology has been perfected to the point of being marketable, you could do any of those things, and possibly bring about that Jurrasic Park doomsday senario.

Although I disagree with you, I liked "craptastically" better!

Jurassic Park? Why not. One thing this planet has an over abundance of is humans.

Atsidi

"Seems to me that the money, time and expertise could be better put to use in cancer research or some such."

Gee, what will you be saying if the cloning of a mammoth leads to a breakthrough in cancer research?

We never know where scientific research will take us.

But for some, most scientific research money could have better been spent, elsewhere.

How about using this technology to clone some of the wildlife we currently have that are on the Endangered Species List like the cheetah, tiger, etc.

Jurrasic Park what? The Crichton novel? The movie? Or the idea? Odds are, the planet probably can't handle both humans AND dinosaurs: it can barely even handle humans! What would a full grown Apatosarus eat? Only the redwoods would be similar to what they lived through, and those aren't exactly common. What's a Utahraptor to eat? Uh, probably cattle: ALL the cattle. And horses. T-Rex? Unless you want to release them in Africa, there isn't any food source (aside from cities, which have large biomasses of human flesh) to sustain them, and they'll simply die off.

I'm being sarcastic, but I don't think a lot of people realise the logistical constraints of a Jurrasic Park senario: There is no uninhabited island big enough to support an ecosystem with animals that large, and even if there were, you would, like the movie, need to bring in extinct plants for them to eat: some of which will have the capability to reproduce overseas as an invasive species. Even if you were to have the EXACT island that they used in Jurrasic Park, here's another big question: for how long? Even in a Jurrasic Park senario, you would need to bring in outside supplies, via humans, to keep the ecosystem fueled. It's not a fast couple trillion dollar investment and then your done: it would cost billions of dollars to maintain for all eternity, and when you stop paying, they die.

The mammoth is a little different though: they grew up in an ecosystem not vastly different from our own. I can't think of any idiot who'd release them into the wilderness of Siberia or Canada and see how they go from there. Personally, there are much easier and far less risky animals to revive: the Thylacine only went extinct about a hundred years ago, so reintroducing them wouldn't be very different from reintroducing a captive population of endagered animals back into its original ecosystem. The dodo died out only four hundred years ago, and they lived in a fairly enclosed environment anyway. Moas... probably not a good idea bringing back, as I doubt New Zeland will be very thrilled to have 12 foot tall birds stomping around. Quagga, we probably don't have enough remaining samples to map its DNA, so they might not even be possible to bring back. Passanger Pigeons aren't a good idea either, as they would likely multiply to their original population eventually: well over a billion. And we have no idea how that will affect the current ecoystem. But niche species that have only recently passed with remaining environments that haven't changed drastically could be reintroduced: the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Yeah yeah, I know), the Stellar's Sea Cow, and the Great Auk are all examples.

good point haha maybe itll taste better than cows mmm mamoth burger

Of course they are Rob, did you miss the whole CLONE WARS subplot of STAR WARS? Sheesh.

Get real!

EarlyOut-1524710

"I think it would be more useful for science to work on preserving the species we've got now, roughly 30,000 of which are going extinct every year."

i thought we were losing "only" 5000 species of plant and animals, per year, to extinction.

Preach brother! As it clearly states in Leviticus, "...and the use of embryonic stem cells in biomedical research and the resurection of extinct mammals shall be forever prohibited. Thus sayeth the Lord."

To both Skip and Matt I say

BEST. COMMENTS. EVER.

Behemoth and leviathan are both mentioned in the old testament. Leviathan is obviously a reference to a large sea creature, likely some sort of whale. Behemoth could be construed as reference to an elephant, but the sake of the current discussion since there's no mention of hairlessness, lets assume it's a reference to barely remembered recollections of mastodons or mammoths.

From wikipedia:

Job 40:15-24 describes Behemoth, and then the sea-monster Leviathan, to demonstrate to Job the futility of questioning God, who alone has created these beings and who alone can capture them.^[2] Many scholars have understood both beasts as forms of the chaos deity destroyed by the storm-god in the battle that preceded creation. Leviathan is identified with the primeval sea (Job 3:8;Ps. 74:13), and in apocalyptic literature describing the end-time, as that adversary of the deity before creation will finally be defeated. In the divine speeches in Job, Behemoth and Leviathan are composite and mythical creatures with enormous strength, which humans like Job could not hope to control. But both are reduced to the status of divine pets, with rings through their noses and Leviathan on a leash.^[3]

¹⁵ Behold now the behemoth that I have made with you; he eats grass like cattle.
¹⁶ Behold now his strength is in his loins and his power is in the navel of his belly.
¹⁷ His tail hardens like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
¹⁸ His limbs are as strong as copper, his bones as a load of iron.
¹⁹ His is the first of God's ways; [only] his Maker can draw His sword [against him].
²⁰ For the mountains bear food for him, and all the beasts of the field play there.
²¹ Does he lie under the shadows, in the cover of the reeds and the swamp?
²² Do the shadows cover him as his shadow? Do the willows of the brook surround him?
²³ Behold, he plunders the river, and [he] does not harden; he trusts that he will draw the Jordan into his mouth.
²⁴ With His eyes He will take him; with snares He will puncture his nostrils.

@ Matt: On killing human infants for research please see Exodus 20:13.

I don't think it even requires a highschool diploma to figure out the meaning.

However, on cloning animals; go for it! Got nothing against that.

@ timbo123: Only the scientists doing the research go to hell right? So why not sit back and benefit from their research, secure in the knowledge that you are morally superior to those that are trying to improve larges swathes of the population's quality of life.