A private company wants to resurrect a gigantic species that once roamed the Earth — and it’ll spare no expense to make its plan a reality.
Sound familiar?
A new startup says it’s prepared to spend US$15 million on the Jurassic Park–esque dream of reviving the long-dead woolly mammoth, in hopes of one day restoring it to the tundra regions that it once called home.
Those tundra regions now belong to countries like Russia and Canada, which might have something to say about releasing big hairy elephant hybrids into their respective wildernesses. Those areas are also rapidly warming due to climate change, meaning they will look different from what they were when the last mammoth died 4,000 years ago.
Nevertheless, a company called Colossal says it’s got enough private funding to potentially make its woolly dream come true through cutting-edge gene-editing techniques.
“Our teams have collected viable DNA samples, and are editing the genes that will allow this wonderful megafauna to once again thunder through the Arctic,” Colossal says on its website.
Biotech entrepreneur Ben Lamm and George Church, a renowned Harvard geneticist, announced their startup on Monday.
“Our goal is to make a cold-resistant elephant, but it is going to look and behave like a mammoth,” Church told the Evening Standard. “Not because we are trying to trick anybody, but because we want something that is functionally equivalent to the mammoth, that will enjoy its time at -40 Celsius, and do all the things that elephants and mammoths do.”
They also want to establish a population that will interbreed and carry on without human guidance.
Colossal co-founders Ben Lamm, left, and George Church are shown in this handout photo.
Business Wire
The co-founders aim to produce mammoth-elephant calves within the next six years, with the goal of establishing wild populations in northern Eurasia and North America in the future.
They’re framing it as a de-extinction effort that could also help the environment, especially if the mammoth hybrids can transform the tundra into fertile carbon-capturing grassland. Their method could also potentially be used to revive other extinct species in the future, including ones that died out because of humans.
Colossal’s plan is to use CRISPR, a genetic copy-and-paste tool, to combine mammoth DNA with that of its living cousin, the Asian elephant. The mammoth DNA will come from specimens recovered from the melting permafrost in Siberia, and the elephant DNA will be extracted from elephant skin cells.
1:47 Are gene-edited babies the future? How CRISPR technology works
Are gene-edited babies the future? How CRISPR technology works – Nov 28, 2018
Church says he’ll create a hybrid set of DNA that includes the cold-weather traits of the mammoth. This DNA will then replace the DNA inside an Asian elephant egg, and the egg will be implanted into a female elephant to carry it to term.
If all goes well, the elephant mother would give birth to a very hairy hybrid resembling the mammoths of old.
If it doesn’t go well… well… at least they’re not planning an amusement park around it?
“I’m not making a bold prediction this is going to be easy,” Church told the New York Times. “But everything up to this point has been relatively easy. Every tissue we’ve gone after, we’ve been able to get a recipe for.”
The actual pregnancy might prove to be difficult, as Colossal expects the elephant mother to carry a hefty mammoth fetus for 18 to 22 months.
Adult woolly mammoths stood about two feet taller and weighed about two tons more than today’s Asian elephants, so the hybrid fetus might prove a challenge for its mother.
The whole project also presents a raft of ethical issues, according to several outside scientists who have commented on the proposal.
Victoria Herridge of Natural History Museum said the whole thing seems “implausible” and riddled with questions about what happens once the creature is brought to life.
“What is this creature? Is it a new species? How many do you need?” she asked in an interview with the Evening Standard. “If they succeed, what will the needs be of an intelligent social creature? And what are our obligations to it?”
Heather Bushman, a philosopher at the London School of Economics, said she’s worried about the lives that the potential hybrid calves might lead.
“You don’t have a mother for a species that — if they are anything like elephants — has extraordinarily strong mother-infant bonds that last for a very long time,” she told the New York Times. “Once there is a little mammoth or two on the ground, who is making sure that they’re being looked after?”
Church has been on the side of bleeding-edge genetic experiments before. In 2018, for instance, he supported a Chinese scientist who claimed to have made a designer baby with immunity to HIV.
Colossal has secured roughly $15 million in private funding from various investors, including the Winklevoss twins.
But that money didn’t come easy. Church spent years trying to drum up investments, and the project didn’t take off until he piqued Lamm’s interest during a meeting in 2019.
“We had about $100,000 over the last 15 years, which is way, way less than any other project in my lab, but not through lack of enthusiasm,” Church told CNBC. “Ben came out of the blue, I think inspired at a distance from what he was reading about this very charismatic project, which was very underfunded.”
Lamm suggests the mammoth would be a proof of concept for Colossal’s technology, and that the same techniques could later be used for “thoughtful, disruptive conservation.”
Colossal is not the first group to take aim at resurrecting the mammoth through gene editing. The California-based Revive & Restore Project also wants to see the woolly mammoth brought back to life.
Scientists have toyed with the idea of resurrecting mammoths for years, in large part because there are so many well-preserved bodies left over in the Russian permafrost. Those bodies are rich with various tissues and DNA, unlike the remains of dinosaurs, which typically turn to stone through the fossilization process.
In other words, Jurassic Park is still a Hollywood pipe dream, but a Pleistocene World might be in reach — especially if Colossal can deliver on its mammoth promise.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
