Science
- Scientists create human embryos to make stem cells – latimes.com
- Could extinct woolly mammoth soon be revived using fossil DNA? – latimes.com
Will scientists soon be able to revive the long-extinct woolly mammoth? What about the dodo, the Chinese river dolphin or the saber-toothed cat?
With the great technological leaps forward over the past decade, bringing back dead-and-gone species using DNA preserved in fossils might be possible in the near future, researchers said this month at a TEDx event in Washington, D.C.
That doesn’t mean Jurassic Park will ever become a reality;scientists recently calculated DNA’s half-life to be 521 years, which means that dinosaur DNA could not have survived from their extinction 65 million years ago. But perhaps the makers of the animated movie “Ice Age” may have an excuse to write yet another sequel.
“The revival of an extinct species is actually within reach,” Hendrik Poinar, an evolutionary biologist at McMaster University in Canada, said at the event.
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