Extinction...will it soon be extinct?

A recent article published in New Scientist, entitled ‘Ten extinct beasts that could walk the Earth again,’ has outlined the current scientific advances that are making it increasingly plausible that long-extinct creatures could one day be brought back to life. According to the article it was last November, when geneticists published the near-complete DNA sequence for the woolly mammoth that examination into this process began. Whilst current scientific advances, according to Stephan Schuster a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University, do not allow a living, breathing creature to be created from a genome sequence which exists only in a computer’s memory, Schuster predicts that someone soon is sure to successfully achieve this and why not, everything required to recreate an organism is in its DNA. The problem that arises however, is that this process will only be possible for creatures for which a complete genome sequence can be retrieved, it is therefore essential that the specimen is naturally preserved so that the probability of finding some intact stretches of DNA is much higher. Unfortunately according to Schuster even in ideal conditions no genetic information is likely to survive more than a million years, so it will not be possible to use this method on dinosaurs; “It’s really only worth studying specimens that are less than 100,000 years old,’ stated Schuster. The genomes of a number of extinct species are already being sequenced, just as the mammoth was, in anticipation that this method may one day become a reality. However Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany has shown that whilst this process is an exciting possibility it may not become a reality for quite some time. “Whilst it’s hard to say that something will never ever be possible this process would require technologies so far removed from what we currently have that I cannot imagine how it would be done in the near future." Scientists have however already chosen 10 extinct organisms, based on their level of possible successful resurrection, which if this technology is developed it will be applied to first. Included in the list is the Sabre-Toothed Tiger (Smilodon fatalis), Dodo (Raphus cucullatus), Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) and even the Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis).

The last Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine), a female about 12 years old which died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936.

Reference: Nicholls, Henry 2009, 'Ten extinct beasts that could walk the earth again', New Scientist, Issue 2690