Scientists are getting closer to reviving the mammoth

© Dall-E/Lemon squeezer

Science gives the impression of bringing reality ever closer to fiction. When the first Jurassic Park, in 1993, showed what a future could look like where genetics would make it possible to resurrect prehistoric species – we could have completely imagined that thirty to fifty years later, this future would eventually come to fruition. For better or for worse.

By making a new major step forward towards the resurrection of the woolly mammoth 31 years after Steven Spielberg's cult film, Colossal Biosciences wishes above all to give humanity a chance to partially catch up with the mass extinction caused by man. The startup's scientists have just announced the development of stem cells essential to this feat.

The woolly mammoth could well be brought back to life within four years

De facto the woolly mammoth that will emerge from the firm's labs will not quite be a mammoth, but rather a hybrid between the mammoth and the elephant – the last female mammoth having disappeared around 4,000 years ago. What is important here is the development of a complete protocol for extracting genetic material from an extinct species and then implanting a fertilized egg in vitro with this DNA.

As modern elephants are genetically quite close to mammoths, researchers believe that gestation will be able to follow its course normally and result in a birth. Ultimately, the mammoth, like other extinct species, could be brought back to populations sufficient to survive and thrive in the modern era in environments suited to them.

The subject obviously raises serious ethical, philosophical and potentially, tomorrow political questions – like the effects of the reintroduction of locally extinct species such as wild bears or wolves. The company's progress also raises the question of who will decide or not on these resurrections, and more generally the necessary legal framework.

The American firm seems in any case in to achieve its objective “within four years”, as it announced in 2023. Time, no doubt, to think carefully about the relevance of transforming the broken pots of the Holocene into an immense global kintsugi.

• Colossal Biosciences announces that it has succeeded in creating stem cells essential for the birth of a mammoth.
• The firm plans to achieve this feat in less than four years now, which would potentially mean that the fiction shown in Jurassic Park in 1993 will come to fruition within a short time. #8217;here 2030
• The startup explains that it wants to develop the tool that will allow humanity to repair some of the species extinctions for which it is responsible.

< li>However, the project itself raises questions about its ethical and philosophical dimension – not to mention its potential effects on modern ecosystems very often placed in precarious stability, when they are not in agony.

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