De-extinction

Do you know that scientists are trying to bring back extinct animals? My students are fascinated by this idea. It's called de-extinction and it has already been achieved.

The first de-extinction in history occurred in 2003 when scientists took DNA from a bucardo (an extinct Spanish Ibex), planted it as a cloned egg into a goat, allowed the pregnancy to come to term and a live baby bucardo was born. It did not live long but the fact that it lived makes de-extinction a reality.  Scientists are currently working on bringing back extinct animals such as:

1.  The Passenger Pigeon -Your grandparents/great-grandparents may remember this bird. It was once one of the most abundant birds in the world. It was hunted to extinction in 1914.

2. The Thylacine aka the Tasmanian Tiger- this was an Australian marsupial wolf! Also hunted to  extinction, in 1936.

3.  The Gastric Brooding Frog - fascinating creature that actually swallowed their own fertilized eggs & then used their stomach as a uterus. The babies grew in the mom's stomach until they were too large whereupon the mom burped them all out! They became extinct in 1979, killed off by a fungus spread by humans.

4.  The Woolly Mammoth - Do you know mammoths became extinct on the mainland about 10,000 years ago but they still lived on islands off the coasts of Siberia & Alaska until ~3000 years ago? So if you think about that - it means that while the Egyptians were  building their majestic pyramids, mammoths were still alive! Mammoths became extinct most likely due to a warming planet & Pleistocene overkill (hunters).

There are a couple of different ways to bring back an extinct animal. I'll explain one in a nutshell:
1.  Obtain DNA from an extinct animal (example: Tasmanian Tiger) -this can be found in museum specimens and fossils.
2.  Remove the nucleus from a living related animal's egg cell (example: Tasmanian Devil)
3.  Insert the DNA from the extinct mammal into the egg cell
4.  Allow the embryo to develop, every cell will have the extinct animal's DNA in it.
5.   Implant the embryo into a surrogate & the extinct animal will be born.
Sounds like science fiction, right? It's a reality & it has already been done. Fascinating science!