Ever since "Jurassic Park," people have been talking about bringing extinct animals back from the grave. While it is not possible to revive animals that died out hundreds of millions of years ago, it may be possible to bring an animal out of extinction if it died out a little more recently. This isn't science-fiction, this is actual science fact, and while we probably aren't going to be shelling out top dollar to visit a real-life dinosaur theme park anytime soon, there are some incredible advancements in animal resurrection being done. Here are extinct animals science wants to bring back.
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00:00Want to see a giant woolly mammoth roaming the Earth again? How about strange, obscure
00:04birds? Keep watching to learn all about extinct animals that science wants to bring back.
00:10Woolly mammoths went extinct thousands of years ago, but could they ever walk the Earth
00:14again? That's the plan behind a company called Colossal. They received $15 million in private
00:19funds to continue work bringing the woolly mammoth back to life. The company's head,
00:23Harvard Medical School biologist George Church, had been working on the project on a small
00:27scale for nearly a decade when they were awarded the massive investment.
00:31The idea is that they're going to be taking elephant DNA and edit individual genes to
00:35add, subtract, and tweak elements that would give these new creatures the traits of the
00:38woolly mammoth. These include their heavy fur coats, fat stores, and ability to thrive
00:43in extreme cold.
00:44Love Dahlin, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Center for Paleogenetics in Stockholm,
00:50has several details on the effort. Dahlin says the work has merit, particularly in re-establishing
00:54genetic diversity in endangered species. But there's a catch. The genetically engineered
00:59creatures aren't technically mammoths, but are, instead, hairy elephants. So the hopes
01:04of releasing them into the Arctic and rebalancing the ecosystem are unproven.
01:09Cave lions were massive predators that roamed Europe and Asia until about 10,000 to 12,000
01:13years ago. Bigger than today's lions, they weighed up to 800 pounds when grown and counted
01:18cave bears among their prey. It's not clear why they went extinct, but the discovery of
01:22a handful of well-preserved individuals has got scientists wondering about the potential
01:26for the resurrection of the species.
01:28Recently, a couple of two-month-old cubs were discovered that researchers named Boris and
01:32Sparta. The pair were recovered in eastern Russia. It lived around 15,000 years apart.
01:38The younger and more physically intact cave lion is Sparta, who would have lived just
01:42under 28,000 years ago. The young cave lions were so intact that they were almost immediately
01:46questioned about using them to bring their entire species back. It was an endeavor that
01:50Dr. Albert Protopapo suggested would be even easier than bringing back a mammoth. He has
01:55said,
01:56"[Cave and modern lions separated only 300,000 years ago. In other words, they are different
02:00species of the same genus. It would be a revolution and a payback by humans who helped extinguish
02:05so many species."
02:07The moa was a group of giant, flightless birds that were driven to extinction thanks to overhunting
02:11from humans. The little bush moa was one of nine different species, and it made headlines
02:16in 2018. That's when researchers from Harvard University completed the first step in de-extinction.
02:22The scientists completed a full genome of the bird using DNA taken from the toe bone
02:26of a little bush moa. It was no small feat. DNA starts decaying from the time of death.
02:32Reconstructing DNA is often described as sort of like taking a shattered glass and trying
02:36to piece it back together. Only in this case, the research team was dealing with 900 million
02:41nucleotides, the base building blocks of DNA, and millions of DNA fragments. These
02:46needed to be pieced together to build a genome.
02:49"'Failure is not an option.'"
02:51Skeptics, however, have cautioned about the practicality of this for several reasons.
02:55First, there has to be a large number of individuals created to allow a wild population to support
02:59itself without inbreeding and collapse. And the environment has changed in the 600 years
03:04since extinction. The result could be an animal inherently maladapted to the modern world.
03:09Meanwhile, other groups suggest that funds would be better spent protecting the endangered
03:13animals that are still around, like the kiwi.
03:16The island of Pinta in the Galapagos was ruined by humans. In 1959, fishermen put three goats
03:22on the island, thinking they'd produce offspring as a food supply. Unfortunately for everything
03:26already on the island, the goats produced around 40,000 offspring by 1970, which destroyed
03:31the ecosystem.
03:33The tortoise that would become known as Lonesome George was moved to the island's tortoise
03:38But after repeated attempts to find him a suitable mate failed, he died in 2012. It
03:42was believed he was the last of his kind, but now science has good news. In 2020, conservationists
03:48had found a female relative of Lonesome George's. She's a direct descendant of the same species.
03:54After she was discovered, the team also found 18 other females and 11 males who were hybrids
03:58of two species, the Pinta Island Tortoise and the extinct Floriana Island Tortoise.
04:03Scientists also believe that there are more such hybrids, carrying the DNA of their extinct
04:06ancestors. The newly discovered genomes include that of the female, who shared 16 percent
04:11of her genes with Lonesome George. Hopefully, it will provide enough genetic material for
04:15conservationists to start a selective breeding program to resurrect the Pinta and Floriana
04:19tortoises.
04:22Humankind's awe of the auroch is well-recorded. The ancient cattle weren't just the subject
04:26of countless prehistoric cave paintings. They are also mentioned in the writings of Julius
04:30Caesar, who called them extraordinary. Like so many species, they were a casualty of human
04:34activity. Hunting, domestication, and the habitat loss that came with the spread of
04:38agriculture meant the end of these magnificent primordial oxen. The last wild one died in
04:431627.
04:44That may change in a pretty amazing way. Conservationists concerned about the future of wild animals
04:49in Europe have proposed a massive rewilding scheme. Rebuilding aurochs and reintroducing
04:54them to the wild is part of that. The idea is pretty straightforward. Aurochs disappeared
04:58in part because they bred with domesticated cattle. As a result, some of their genetic
05:02material and traits live on. By selectively breeding for those traits, it's hoped that
05:06an entire species of aurochs will be distilled of those cattle.
05:10There was a calf born in March of 2020. His name was Darwin, and he marks the so-called
05:14Generation F3, which will be the parent generation of offspring that researchers hope to call
05:18very, very close to their ancient ancestors.
05:22There have been plenty of cautionary tales about the dangers of messing with dinosaur
05:26DNA, but that hasn't stopped real-life scientists from giving it a go.
05:30Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to
05:33think if they should.
05:34The results have been interesting and disturbing at the same time. In 2016, researchers from
05:38the University of Chile decided to dive into the DNA of chickens. It turns out they didn't
05:43need dinosaur DNA to reverse-engineer modern chickens into something more like their ancient
05:47ancestors.
05:48Basically, the scientists turned off a gene called IHH. It prevented that gene from halting
05:53the growth of the fibula. With that gene turned off, chickens grew bones that looked disturbingly
05:57like bones of the ancient Archaeopteryx. The Smithsonian said that something similar had
06:02been done a year prior.
06:04Paleontologists at the University of Chicago led a study to tweak chicken DNA to give embryos
06:08snouts instead of the standard beak. They were just trying to find out how beaks evolved
06:12in the first place, but with further advances, they might just have the tools to go one step
06:16further.
06:17In 2020, National Geographic reported on findings that came out of the Institute of Vertebrate
06:21Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in China. Researchers had found what looked like dinosaur
06:27DNA in the remains of a 75-million-year-old skull. And more DNA, this time from 120-million-year-old
06:33fossils, was potentially found in 2021. While researchers say they're far away from rebuilding
06:38an entire dinosaur, this could be the first step.
06:42The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, is definitely extinct. Still, that hasn't stopped the buzz
06:46about it, and in recent years there have been more reported sightings of the thylacine than
06:50of Bigfoot and Elvis combined. It's given rise to a fascinating conversation about perception
06:55and interpretation of things like photographic evidence. But just as interesting is the fact
07:00that someday, people might see actual living thylacines again.
07:04This weird sort of marsupial dog only went extinct fairly recently. The designation was
07:08made official in 1982, the last captive animal died in 1936, and it's believed the last wild
07:14ones died in the 1940s. Examining DNA from a 108-year-old baby thylacine was meant to
07:20be an experiment that would hopefully determine how wolf-like they were. In 2008, scientists
07:24took that DNA, injected it into a mouse, and saw it function to guide bone and cartilage
07:28development.
07:29Then, in 2010, the preserved remains of a thylacine joey yielded enough DNA that researchers
07:34from the University of Melbourne called it the roadmap for getting the thylacine back.
07:39The goal is to rebuild the thylacine genome, gestated in a surrogate or artificial womb,
07:44and see what is born.
07:46It used to be that the term quahog was used to refer to any zebra that had a specific
07:50and distinctive pattern of stripes. The Quahog Project says that helped lead to the very
07:54mistaken belief that there were many more of the animals than there actually were, and
07:58they were hunted into extinction.
08:00The last quahog died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883. Since then, DNA analysis has proven
08:05that they were a separate subspecies of the plain zebra.
08:08Fast forward to the late 1980s and the start of an ambitious breeding project. The idea
08:13was to take closely related zebras selected for their quahog-like traits, like brown coats
08:17and a lack of stripes, and breed them in such a way that the traits would be accentuated
08:21in the next generation.
08:22Reinhold Rauhs' pioneering work on the project was initially met with pretty wild disdain,
08:27but he carried on. The project's first foal was born in 1988, and these faux quahogs are
08:32now named Rauhquahogs. As of 2021, the project was welcoming its next generations of foals.
08:38Entire breeding herds, led by hand-selected stallions, are currently producing their sixth
08:42generation, which the Quahog Project says is getting closer and closer to the original
08:46animal.
08:48According to Trent University, passenger pigeons went from numbering in the billions, flying
08:52in flocks so large that they were once called a biological storm, to gone in just around
08:5740 years. The last one died in 1914. Now, however, an organization called Revive & Restore
09:02is working on bringing them back.
09:04The idea is to take a flock of rock pigeons that have been engineered to include something
09:08called a Cas9 gene. Without getting too into the weeds regarding the science, that's a
09:12gene that allows for the use of a gene-editing tool called CRISPR. Scientists plan on using
09:17the tool to add DNA from the extinct passenger pigeons to new generations of rock pigeons.
09:22In 2019, the program saw the birth of its first pigeon that contained the Cas9 gene.
09:26And while they found that it was unlikely he would pass the gene on to his offspring,
09:30it was a start. They are still toward the first new passenger pigeons to hatch in 2025.
09:35Not everyone is thrilled, though. Some ornithologists claim that it's not just unethical to de-extinct
09:40the pigeons, but it could be devastating to an environment that's no longer used to having
09:44them around.
09:46The story of the great auk is a pretty harsh one. This large, flightless bird was once
09:50plentiful, but as exploration allowed humankind to expand farther and farther into the bird's
09:54territories, it became easy to prey. By the 16th century, it was clear that something
09:59needed to be done, and warnings not to hunt the birds just made the demand for their feathers
10:02and corpses increase. The last ones were killed in 1844, but they might be due for a return.
10:08The Research Institute Revive and Restore outlined a plan in 2016, and it involved tracking
10:13down preserved remains of great auks, finding and extracting DNA, then using that to rebuild
10:18the bird's genome. That DNA would be inserted into the embryos of a razorbill, the great
10:23auk's nearest living relative, which would then be implanted into another bird. That
10:27bird would have to be big enough to carry and lay a great auk egg, which is why the
10:30razorbill can't be the final destination for the embryo. Could it work? Like most attempts
10:35at resurrecting an extinct species, the answer is, maybe. The good news is that they have
10:39the perfect place to test the theory, the already bird-centric Farns Island off Britain's
10:43east coast.
10:45The ancient steppe bison was a pretty big deal. One of the few megafaunas to survive
10:49through the last ice age, they spread from their native lands in Asia. From there, they
10:53crossed the land bridge into North America and gave rise to America's famous bison. In
10:592016, an ancient but well-preserved steppe bison tail was discovered in the permafrost
11:02around the Indigirka River Basin.
11:04Hmm, he's got a lob, but I don't hear the dub. Oh, ha, there it is.
11:11Researchers date that tail to around 8,000 years ago, and are pretty sure it's intact
11:14enough that it'll yield some DNA. That DNA would then be used to create clone embryos
11:19of the steppe bison, which could be implanted into a cow. They estimate the baby born to
11:23the surrogate mother would be 99.8% newborn bison, but that's a bit down the road. Before
11:29trying it with a steppe bison, scientists say they first need to learn how the process
11:32works and if it's even viable. That means testing it. The successful cloning of a Canadian
11:37wood bison would have to be done before attempts were made at bringing back the steppe bison.
11:42It's nowhere near as flashy as a woolly mammoth, but it turns out that the restoration of the
11:46heath hen might be much more practical and possible. The conservation and de-extinction
11:51organization Revive & Restore is working on the heath hen project. They say it's notable
11:56as one of the first species that Americans actively tried to protect.
11:59Once widespread across the northern Atlantic coast, residents of Martha's Vineyard established
12:03a preserve for the only birds remaining in 1870. All their efforts were ultimately in
12:08vain, and the heath hen vanished in 1932. They're currently working on a few aspects
12:12of the de-extinction, and that includes figuring out where the heath hen fits in with living
12:16relatives on a genetic level. They're also trying to figure out what behavioral and biological
12:20traits made them different from other birds, and what genetic pathways those things are
12:24connected to. Then they need to figure out how to tweak embryos to produce these decades-dead
12:28birds.
12:30The Smithsonian says that when George Wilhelm Steller saw and documented the existence of
12:34what would become the Steller's sea cow, it was almost extinct already. And it would only
12:38last a few more decades before it finally went extinct in 1768. Hunting played a big
12:43part in it.
12:45Researchers from Norway's Nord University managed to sequence the genome of the sea
12:48cow. They found that a long period of climate change had resulted in the species' slow
12:52decline. Today, Revive & Restore is looking at the sea cow as a potential candidate for
12:57de-extinction. The hope is that bringing back the sea cow will help stabilize an ecosystem
13:01and repair some of the damage done by extinction and by other factors. It's a massive undertaking.
13:06And while the 2021 sequencing of the sea cow genome means that one hurdle has been overcome,
13:11there are still other things to consider.
13:13The ecosystems have changed in the last few hundred years, so making sure that there's
13:17still a place for the sea cow is paramount. They also need to make sure that the factors
13:20that led to their extinction in the first place are no longer an issue.
13:24The Xerces blue butterfly is an example of a creature that's small yet mighty. The butterfly
13:29was the first species that scientists were able to prove went extinct solely due to human
13:33interference. In this case, it was habitat loss. As populations grew out from the San
13:38Francisco area, the landscape was changed. Fields and sand dunes were turned to pavement,
13:42and native flowers disappeared.
13:44The Xerces blue butterfly became a symbol of the damage humankind has done, and in 2021,
13:50conservationists got the news they were looking for. DNA extracted from a 93-year-old specimen
13:54from Chicago's Field Museum proved that people were to blame for the extinction.
13:58The Xerces was one of the first recorded or documented cases of an animal going extinct
14:04or being driven to extinction by human causes.
14:07The butterfly's status as an icon for conservation has also gotten it attention as a candidate
14:12for de-extinction, thanks to recent developments in the field. In addition to exploring its
14:16DNA, there's another theory, too. Some scientists believe that thanks to a habitat restoration
14:21project, introducing a closely related butterfly might kickstart a re-evolution of the Xerces.
14:26Still, Felix Brewe, Xerces researcher and co-director of the Grainger Bioinformatics
14:31Center, summed up everything that needed to go before de-extinction.
14:34Before we start putting a lot of effort into resurrection, let's put that effort into protecting
14:38what's there and learn from our past mistakes.
14:42The Pyrenean Ibex, or Bucardo, a type of Spanish goat that lived in the Pyrenees Mountains
14:46at border France and Spain, was on the verge of extinction in 2000, with only three females
14:51still alive. Once they died out, French and Spanish scientists harvested as much of their
14:55genetic information as they could and started a project to clone the animal. They succeeded
15:00in manipulating the DNA of a Bucardo and placing it into the embryo of a surrogate mother,
15:05a comet goat. A baby was born on July 30, 2004, but died of respiratory issues minutes
15:10later. Not only was this a significant achievement in cloning technology, but it represented
15:15the first successful live birth of an extinct animal. Though the baby died, the experiment
15:19proved that de-extinction was possible.
15:21A new effort to return the Bucardo from extinction began in 2013 by the Center for Research in
15:26Food Technology of Uruguay. One of the principal scientists behind the efforts began the process
15:31of determining if the 14-year-old genetic information obtained from the last living
15:34Bucardo is still viable. The sample has been frozen in liquid nitrogen since it was last
15:39used. So part of the project isn't just to bring back the Bucardo, but also to see if
15:43preserved material can be used after an extended period of time. If everything checks out,
15:48they'll attempt the cloning and breeding process all over again, and hopefully get more than
15:52a few minutes' worth of success this time.
15:55The beautiful Carolina parakeet was the only parrot indigenous to the United States. At
15:59one time, the parakeet was prevalent all across the North American continent, but it was declared
16:03extinct in 1939. It had an obnoxiously loud call and would eat the seeds and crops of
16:09farmers, which explains why farmers so aggressively killed them.
16:12The crazy broad grabs the gun and tries to shoot me! Me! Crackers!
16:16Because why are you talking? How can a bird be talking?
16:22Efforts to revive this extinct animal have followed similar plans to breed dormant genes
16:25into other extinct species. The closest known relative is the Jandaya parakeet from the
16:30eastern South American rainforests. Cross-breeding programs, as well as attempts to isolate the
16:34genetic code and introduce it into a Jandaya embryo are underway.
16:38If successful, the Carolina parakeet will likely settle on the shores of Lake Okeechobee
16:42in Florida. Researchers plan to introduce 100 birds there once they've succeeded in
16:46breeding them in captivity. That is, assuming their annoying squawks don't quickly result
16:50in a second extinction.