Monday, December 5, 2011

A "Mammoth" Discovery

Hardy har-har. After struggling through the least informative news session ever seen (on yahoo, probably should have expected as much), I found an article that didn't report more twitter responses than the actual news. Russian and Japanese scientists have found usable mammoth DNA in preserved bone marrow and plan to clone the extinct animal in the next five years. Personally, I think it's cool. I don't have a problem with cloning  (as long as there's not a second me running around without my authority, or am I the clone? AH!)  But really, it's pretty cool news. Not only because of the fact that a never-before-seen live animal may be once again, alive, but for the possibility of preservation of current endangered species that this could lead to, not to mention the number of animals that have gone extinct due to...
http://www.theweek.co.uk/health-science/43298/cloned-mammoth-step-closer-thanks-global-warming

And before anyone gets their panties in an uproar and claims "Jurassic Park is coming to the real-world"  (o how I wish it was true) realize that mammoths largely went extinct only 10,000 years ago with a dwarfed relative living till 1700 BC while the last of the Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 MILLION years ago. That's 6,500 times as long ago and given that it took this long to find good Mammoth DNA, we may have quite a long time before we find enough Dino DNA to make anything other than a crocodile...but we can dream can't we?
However, if Jurassic Park does end up happening, I want Jeff Goldblum on my team.

No comments:

Post a Comment