Monday, January 17, 2011

Bring Me My Mammoth Burger!!


It's not quite Jurassic Park but its damn close.

Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan plan on bringing a Mammoth back to life within the next five years via implanting genetic material obtained from the frozen carcasses of long dead Siberian Mammoths into the embryos of modern elephants.

Though this not a brand new idea, the effort here is far from some of the crack-pot schemes that have been proposed in the past and that you have seen on the cover of "Weekly World News.  It is being run by well respected scientists who have used this method to clone mice from other dead, frozen mice.  It is not that much of a technological leap from their current work and most in the know agree that it is well within their capabilities.  I am far from alone in believing that this will happen in the immediate term, though at first I expect the positive results to be kept quite quiet.

In the longer run however it will become accepted by the general public merely as another, reasonable scientific step forward and will instantly become (if they decide to put the Mammoth on display) the #1 attraction in all of Japan and perhaps the world.  Soon following this advancement I think you could also see other Pleistocene animals "resurrected" and an entire "zoo" created that would house other, similar creatures such as Smilodons, Giant Sloths and Cave Bears--all of which have relatively decent genetic material available to scientists and close relatives still in existence today.

I for one, can't wait to see where this is headed!


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