Posted on 05/03/2010 10:18:11 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Woolly mammoths could one day walk the Earth again, it seems.
In an extraordinary Jurassic Park- style experiment, DNA from a frozen specimen of the extinct giant was used to reproduce their blood.
And it revealed that the beasts used more than their distinctive shaggy coats to keep warm in harsh Arctic conditions 25,000 years ago - they had antifreeze in their veins.
The scientists believe the genetic adaptation technique could be used to resurrect body parts and proteins from other extinct animals.
Researcher Prof Kevin Campbell-of the University of Manitoba, Canada, said: 'The molecules are no different than going back in time and taking a blood sample from a real mammoth.'
To recreate the blood, the scientists used DNA preserved in bones from frozen Siberian specimens up to 43,000 years old.
It was used alongside genetic information from their descendants, Asian elephants.
And this revealed the woolly mammoth's blood adapted to cope with the freezing conditions.
Its 'antifreeze blood' was able to carry oxygen around the body even at low temperatures, researchers told Nature Genetics journal.
This is thought to have evolved after mammoth ancestors moved from tropical Africa in an Ice Age.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Wooly Mammoth Flu will kill us all.
We are all just DYING to see how they will resurrect a T-Rex....
I hear that Woolly Mammoth meat tastes good.... :D
They seem unfitted to modern human life, at 10-12 feet tall ... Anybody think that is why they went extinct?
"I hate it when I'm right all the time..."
“...Back from the Dead”?
Wow! I thought they were going to try to clone it, not attampt to reanimate the actual frozen dead mammoth...
...just what we need -— zombie wooly mamoths.
;-)
Can they all have Ray Romano’s voice?
They were so cuddly in the movie.
“Life finds a way.”
No WONDER they went extinct!
A while back I heard about a guy who died from that. His wife wanted to murder him, so she put a small amount of it in every beer she got out of the fridge for him. Over the course of a couple of months he kept getting sicker and sicker, until one day he slipped in to a coma and died. Apparently he never did feel sick enough to stop drinking beer, though.
Be nice to ride one to the next Rino convention.
We hunted it to extinction - now it’s hunting us! Tagline from Mammoth http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0487037/ Summer Glau alert
They died out for reason.
I believe this is actually the host organism of the "Wooly Mammoth Flu"...
Great minds think alike :)
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