Russia is opening a 'Jurassic Park style' research lab to resurrect the woolly mammoth
Woolly mammoths may soon be making a comeback as Russian scientists plan to clone them, using Ice Age DNA at a Jurassic Park-style lab in Siberia.
Plans for the new “world class paleo-genetic scientific centre” in the Russian city of Yakutsk will be unveiled next month at the 4th Eastern Economic Forum. The £4.5 million lab will research the genetics of a number of extinct species once native to that particular area, including woolly mammoths, woolly rhino's, cave lions, and breeds of extinct horses. They're still Although their end goal is still a fair few years from completion, they say their research will help bring these extinct species out of extinction.
Even though the scientists are still a few years off from actually bringing these creatures back, they say the sub-zero temperatures of Siberia is the prime location for this kind of research. They currently have around 80 percent of soft tissue samples from extinct animals from the Pleistocene and Holocene period which are being stored in a prehistoric-type fridge.
While it's all very exciting, it's also terrifying and kind of wrong to try and bring these animals back. People have expressed their thoughts:
If they succeed, can you imagine what kind of life for these animals? They won’t be in the wild. They’ll be caged. They will be sought after and killed or stolen.They’re gone. Leave them that way. It will be of no service to them to bring them back.
Another said:
I wonder if we will ever find intact Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA in the frozen tundra?Then there will be the ethical dilemma, but I do predict that somebody will try to bring back human ancestor species.
This is just a recipe for disaster.
