Scientists are working to resurrect the woolly mammoth and it could happen in as less as four years. The ice age beast that went extinct might walk the Earth once again soon, a company backed by Paris Hilton and Chris Hemsworth, said.
Colossal Biosciences calls itself “the world’s first de-extinction company,” and is developing a method to revive “core” genes from animals that have been extinct for thousands of years. This includes not only the woolly mammoth but also the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger, The Independent reported.
“We have set a date of late 2028 for our first mammoth and we are on track for that currently, which is great,” the CEO of the company, Ben Lamm, told the Independent.
Lamm told Daily Mail that the entire process is like a “reverse Jurassic Park”.
According to The Intercept, the company has raised more than $235 million, thanks to its celebrity backers. PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel and motivational speaker Tony Robbins are pumping money into the company, besides the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to the report.
Lamm added that mammoths have a 22-month gestation period, which means another species might return before it does.
“But given the other species have much shorter gestation, it is highly likely that we will see another species before the mammoth.”
His eyes are set on the dodo and the Tasmanian Tiger for an early revival. Notably, the Tasmanian tiger went extinct in the early 1980s, while the dodo bird was last seen in the 1600s. The former can be revived in just weeks, while the dodo will take about one month, according to Lamm.
He believes that “it is highly likely we will have a species before 2028″, and it will be one of the three.
The woolly mammoth has not been around for over 4,000 years. However, it shares 99.5 per cent of its genes with the Asian elephant. The company is using gene editing and fusing stem cells with an Asian elephant egg.
According to a statement on the company’s site, the resurrected mammoth will be “more specifically a cold-resistant elephant with all of the core biological traits of the woolly mammoth.”
“It will walk like a woolly mammoth, look like one, sound like one,” he said.
The company claims that the return of the mammoth can help the environment, by reversing global warming. “It could help in reversing the rapid warming of the climate and more pressingly, protect the Arctic’s permafrost,” the company says.
