Science in Seconds - Cloning the mammoth

Science in Seconds Know Everything RAVES - Cloning The Mammoth Torah Kachur: If you could bring back a species from extinction, what would you choose? The saber-toothed tiger? The Neanderthal? The dodo? How about the woolly mammoth? OK, so the woolly mammoth may not be as cool as cloning your own pet velociraptor, but at least the mammoth is possible. Mammoths roamed the earth between 150,000 to as recent as 10,000 years ago, and they share common ancestor with the modern day elephant. Mammoth fossils have been a great source of DNA, and so if we have the DNA, we could clone the woolly mammoth. Cloning would involve taking an elephant egg, removing its nucleus, and replacing that with the mammoth DNA. Then, just like in-vitro fertilization, growing it up in an elephant surrogate mother. Voila! A brand new baby woolly mammoth! It may not be possible. Mammoth DNA is fragmented, and it would have to be reassembled to the tune of about $10 million. But if it does, how cool! There may be no point to doing this other than because we can, but really it's amazing; resurrecting a species from extinction, playing God, being awesome, whatever you want to call it. Courtesy of Science in Seconds – All rights reserved Only for educational/non-profit purposes. (Translators are invited to put their name here)