6 ms·
28,000-year-old mammoth cells have shown reactivity in mouse egg cells
- ourmandave 8y agoWith the ice caps melting, is there a big demand for Woolly Mammoths right now? I'm just asking.
- _Microft 8y agoHmm, that might be something for a wildlife park. Just make sure that they can't escape. Put the park on an island in the pacific just to be sure.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 8y agoAlso spare no expense.
- artificial 8y agoAlso hire only one IT guy.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoAlso develop the perfect hack-proof systems: https://jurassicsystems.com/ https://jurassicsystems.com/
- batrat 8y agoMaybe, just maybe, they can make mammoths big as mice and maybe a minified Jurassic Park so politicians will not get scared and say "this things are killing us". Imagine the mammoth pet...awww
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jakamau 8y agoThey make for good PR and are truly extinct; recent extinctions have the potential to be a little less cut-and-dry. We'll need the research if we ever try to bring back species that went extinct in modern times.
- sgolestane 8y agoI saw a program on discovery channel a while back on how resurrecting mammoths would help with preserving the permafrost. Edit: A related article: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/shanephipps/2017/06/20/mammoth-solution-mammoth-problem/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/shanephipps/2017/06/20/mammoth...
- mfoy_ 8y agoDoes that make sense? The logic is that woolly mammoths would... am I reading this right? Tamp down the permafrost? Like, they'd literally just squish the ground on top of it to compact it and insulate the permafrost from rising temperatures? And they'd knock over trees... that's... that's the plan? EDIT: Apparently, yes, that is seriously the idea. But the scale required to make a difference, and the cost to get to that scale boggles my mind. You can't just whip up one pack of mammoths and call it a success...
- cududa 8y agoWell the president did suggest we take forest floors to prevent wildfires, so..
- mirimir 8y agoI suspect that you'd just get lots of mammoths sunk in the mud.
- patall 8y agoWhile the scale required is huge, mammoths are just one of the players here. I am not sure if you have heard of pleistocene park were they have started with horse, karibou, sheep, yak and a few others and already seen some effects. All those animals are seeking plants in some form or the other in the winter and by doing so move the snow cover that is insulating the permafrost, letting the cold seek deeper into it (or rather letting the warmth diffuse out). Mammoths are a key species as they as larger mammals are more prone to trampel down larger vegetation like trees to create the ecosystem all together.
- gwern 8y ago> But the scale required to make a difference, and the cost to get to that scale boggles my mind. You can't just whip up one pack of mammoths and call it a success... I assume the idea is that if you can create your big furry von Neumann machines correctly in the first place, you only need to whip up one pack of mammoths and it will indeed then be a success eventually.
- herogreen 8y agoYes, see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393869
- Mizza 8y agoDoes anybody know why so much mammoth research comes out of Korea and Japan?
- PierredeFermat 8y agoIt might be geographic proximity to Siberia and thus abundance of research material, which drives some funding to do more research which then drives more funding, etc.
- Mikeb85 8y agoStepping stone on the way to making Godzilla a thing... Or possibly just an abundance of biology graduates who need something to do.
- gabbygab 8y agoProbably because they are the two most proximate advanced nations to much of siberia where these mammoths are found. Also, korean and japanese universities might have scientific funding and research agreements with their russian counterparts.
- etxm 8y agoThese are going to taste like shit.
- bem94 8y agoI have yet to hear a convincing argument for "resurrecting" the woolly mammoth. The entire enterprise seems to be an abominably cruel and misspent effort. I've heard some argue we might need to resurrect a lot of species we're killing off in the next 100 years, so it's good practice. Better practice would be looking at those animals we expect to go extinct. Or, yanno, trying to stop the extinction in the first place.
- 14 8y agoWhy not both efforts? Let's try stop the extinction but let's also face the reality that there are a lot of forces working against that effort so maybe a little practice is good?
- manifestsilence 8y agoAlthough there may be some, such as the same techniques being used to de-extinct other more recent species, I think a certain amount of it is "because it's there", and that the irrational desire to accomplish such an outlandish thing may provide motivation and funding from corners that otherwise wouldn't do so. I think it was Jack Horner who was trying to reverse engineer a chicken back into a velociraptor and said something to the effect of that he didn't feel that his efforts would do anything to help humanity, but that the science justified itself, because it was what he wanted to do, to see if it was possible. Of course, with that story, we have a great series of movies to tell us how it probably ends...
- fenwick67 8y ago
- beat 8y agoAh, now I'll have steeds for my robot army! We won't win the war, but we'll look awesome.