Have you ever wondered what would happen if we recreated what happened in the movie Jurassic park? What if scientists actually did manage to bring back the dinosaurs through DNA cloning? Fortunately for humans, the chances of this are next to zero as the dinosaurs have been extinct for 66 million years. However, there is a chance that de-extinction -bringing back a species that has already been declared extinct-may be possible for some other long lost creatures. So what are some of the hypothetical ways that scientists have theorized about?

First of all, How scientists would hypothetically do this is through genome editing or cloning, in which they would take DNA samples from a similar living animal, compare it with the extinct species’, then essentially cut and paste parts of the living animals DNA and insert parts of the extinct species’ genetic code. After the genetic editing, they would transfer what’s called the new, hybrid nucleus into a donor egg of the living animal. If such a process ever happened, then the species created would not technically be exactly the same as the extinct species, but would share many genetic traits.

 The reason it would not be possible to bring back dinosaurs is because the most essential part to bringing them back is having DNA that the scientists can use to create life. Since dinosaurs have not existed in many millions of years, all of the remnants of them have no DNA left in them, as their bones have no organic matter in them anymore and what remains is only minerals. Additionally, DNA breaks into smaller pieces over time due to exposure to the elements and it gets reclaimed by the earth. So for this reason, dinosaurs will not be coming back anytime soon, but what about other animals that went extinct more recently?

The Wooly Mammoth is one possible contender for de-extinction. Wooly mammoths lived in cold climates such as the arctic, which includes the northernmost parts of Eurasia and North America. Their habitat was the tundra which has a layer of permafrost, and this icy environment creates the perfect condition for preservation. Preserved mammoth DNA has been found through frozen carcasses so there are some teams of scientists that believe this return would be possible.

Although an interesting concept, the wooly mammoth, similar to the dinosaur, will probably remain a thing of the past as a big part of its extinction was due to the warming of the climate that came with the end of the ice age, so our current climate would not be very accommodating to them. But all of this goes to show the developments that scientists have made in regards to genetic editing that could have many applications in the natural world.

For Wild Suzhou, I’m Elysia and thank you for listening.