The long-dead woolly mammoth will be reborn by 2027, claims Colossal, a biotech company based in Dallas, Texas, USA.
Last year, the company secured an additional $60 million in funding to continue the mammoth gene-editing work it began in 2021.
If successful, Colossal will not only bring back the extinct species, which the company often refers to not as a mammoth, but as a “cold-resistant elephant”, but also place it in the same ecosystem in which it once lived.
Colossal calls the large-scale colonization of the Arctic “cold-resistant elephant” part of the health of the Arctic ecosystem, and also believes that this will have a beneficial effect on the health of the global ecosystem.
Initially, Colossal hoped to populate the northern part of Russian Siberia with mammoths, but due to the tense political situation, they had to look for other options. It is possible that they will work in Canada or Alaska.
The woolly mammoth’s DNA is 99.6% identical to that of the Asian elephant, leading Colossal to believe this is the main key to achieving their goal.
“In the minds of many, the mammoth has disappeared forever. But not in the minds of our scientists, nor in our company’s laboratories. We are already in the process of recovering the woolly mammoth.
“Our teams have collected viable DNA samples and are editing the genes that will allow this wonderful megafauna to again make noise in the Arctic”, the company said in a statement.
By editing the genes of Asian elephants and mammoths, Colossal scientists want to create a woolly mammoth embryo, which will then be placed in the uterus of an African elephant.
Why not Asian? Because African elephants are larger and this will help the elephant safely endure and give birth to a mammoth.
When there are enough of these mammoths to create a herd, they will be relocated to the Arctic zone, where the peculiarities of their diet will help the local flora. Especially if in the future herds of mammoths will migrate back and forth.
