What Do We Need to Know Before Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth?

Millions of years ago, majestic shaggy-haired animals with long tusks roamed the earth during the Pleistocene era, otherwise known as the Ice Age. Known as woolly mammoths, these giant creatures thrived alongside caribou, bison, and woolly rhinoceroses in the cold grasslands of the Mammoth Steppe, earth’s largest ecosystem spanning from the Arctic Islands to China and from Spain to Canada.

Because these large herbivores grazed on vegetation, fertilized soil, and trampled on moss, shrubs, and trees, this ecosystem was rich in grassy and herbaceous vegetation.

According to researchers, climate warming caused a wave of human migration during the late Pleistocene era that led to changes in their habitat. Increased human activity caused grasslands with fertile soil to disappear and animals were unable to find enough forage to survive in the winter. Hunters also preyed upon them causing animal populations to decline, and over time, some of these animals went extinct.

Part of the grassland ecosystem once home to the woolly mammoth is what we know today as the Arctic tundra. Dr. George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard University believes that bringing back the woolly mammoth, which went extinct around 4,000 years ago, can restore the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem.

And that restoring this ecosystem could help slow the melting of permafrost in the Arctic, reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and stave off climate change.

A CRISPR Future

Dr. Church, who is known as a pioneer of both genome sequencing and gene editing, was instrumental in developing technology to read and write ancient DNA, and has been working on this project to genetically-engineer the woolly mammoth for years.

His plans for de-extinction of the woolly mammoth involve combining parts of its genetic code with the Asian elephant—its closest living relative—and gestating the embryos in artificial wombs or a surrogate African elephant.

Using gene editing technology, CRISPR, resurrecting woolly mammoths to “walk the Arctic tundra again” is the first focus of his bioscience and genetics company, Colossal.

While de-extinction might conjure up Jurassic Park-like images for some people, Colossal stresses that restoring the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem is not akin to genetically engineering dinosaurs to meander about a theme park terrorizing visitors.

Dr. Church plans to house early proxies of the genetically engineered woolly mammoths in Pleistocene Park, a nature reserve in Siberia founded in 1996 and run by scientists Sergey and Nikita Zimov. The Park is currently home to bison, musk oxen, and wild horses.

Dr. Church is not the first scientist to embark on genetic engineering. Scientists have been involved in similar projects over the years, including: impregnating a goat with embryos of a Pyrenean ibex (a wild mountain goat species that went extinct in 2000) in 2003; cloning embryos of a gastric-brooding frog (declared extinct in 2002) in 2013; and cloning Dolly the Sheep in 1996.

So far, many of these attempts have been impermanent: The embryos of the gastric-brooding frog only survived for a few days, the newborn Pyrenean ibex lived for a few minutes before dying from physical defects in her lung, and Dolly lived six years before she died from a lung infection.

Roaming Earth Again

“There's a big step between having a cell living in a dish in a lab and having a living mammoth,” says Dr. Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist. “There are many things that make an organism or ecosystem the way it is that we can't reconstruct in a lab.”

De-extinction, Dr. Shapiro says, is a challenging process because of associated risks and outcomes like these that scientists cannot yet fully predict.

“For every potential candidate for de-extinction, there are different technical, ethical and ecological challenges, and there are questions that we do not yet have the answers to,” she says.

Questions like: “Who do you use as a surrogate maternal host to carry the pregnancy to term? Who nurtures the newborn baby mammoth after birth? What would be the impact of reintroducing a once extinct species into an environment that is nothing like the Ice Age environment it once inhabited?”

Dr. Shapiro explains that because these questions are still being studied by scientists, we cannot place time constraints on the process of de-extinction or bringing back the woolly mammoth.

However, gene editing technology is still being used in groundbreaking ways. She shares that scientists are conducting studies with existing species to help them adapt to changes that are happening in their landscape and cites the Black-footed Ferret Project as an example.

In 2020 a black-footed ferret was cloned, making it the first endangered species to be cloned in the United States. Once thought to be extinct, small populations of the black-footed ferret have since been discovered and Revive & Restore, a US-based non-profit, is working on a study to preserve its genetic diversity and save it from extinction.

Unlike its evolutionary cousin, the domestic ferret, black-footed ferrets are incredibly susceptible to the sylvatic plague and it is one of the biggest threats they face out in the wild. Using gene editing technology, Revive & Restore is working to help black-footed ferrets develop a stronger immune response to the sylvatic plague.

Some scientists are also using gene editing technologies to help corals adapt to warmer waters and survive climate change.

“I think it’s much more practical to help living species adapt and survive in today's climate,” Dr. Shapiro says. “I think the real solution to the extinction crisis is to change our behaviour and become better stewards of the planet.”

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What Do We Need to Know Before Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth?

A CRISPR Future

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Roaming Earth Again

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