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A biotech company that hopes to resurrect extinct species said Wednesday that it has reached an important milestone: the creation of a long-sought kind of stem cell for the closest living relative of the woolly mammoth. "This is probably the most significant step in the early stages of this project," said George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-founded Colossal Biosciences in Dallas. The woolly mammoth was a big, shaggy species of elephant that roamed the tundra before going extinct thousands of years ago. Colossal has been working to bring the mammoth, the...

The woolly mammoth could roam the Earth once again. That’s the goal of Colossal Biosciences as the biotech company announced a major breakthrough Wednesday in its mission to revive the 6-ton, 16-foot animal back from extinction. The Dallas-based company said it has created a set of stem cells from an Asian elephant in hopes of bringing back a creature that would be eerily similar to the woolly mammoth, according to reports. “This is probably the most significant step in the early stages of this project,” said geneticist and company co-founder George Church, a Harvard University professor, according to NPR. The...

Ask why, exactly, we need to bring woolly mammoths back to life after 4,000 years, and the answers become numerous and hideously predictable.To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in “Jurassic Park,” just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should — even if that something is “cool.”Ben Lamm and Eriona Hysolli recently took to Newsweek to announce that they and their team at Colossal Biosciences are bringing the woolly mammoth back to life. This is not a pie-in-the-sky pseudo-sci fi dream that might happen at some undefined future date. “Our first mammoth calves will be born in 2028,” they declare.The plan...

A rare artifact has been discovered by archaeologists at an ancient mammoth kill site near Douglas, Wyoming, which they say is the oldest of its kind ever found in the Americas. The discovery, a tube-shaped piece of bone, is likely to have been a bead dating to around 12,940 years old, potentially making it the oldest known instance of American perforated jewelry. The discovery was made by University of Wyoming archaeology Professor Todd Surovell and his team at the La Prele Mammoth site, a location first revealed to archaeologists in 1986 when mammoth remains were found eroding out of a...

Straight-tusked elephants were the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene epoch, present in Europe and western Asia between 800,000 and 100,000 years ago.These animals had a very wide head and extremely long tusks, and were roughly three times larger than that of living Asian elephants, twice that of African ones, and also much larger than woolly mammoths.Estimates of maximum shoulder height vary from 3 to 4.2 m (10-14 feet) and body mass from 4.5 to 13 tons for females and males, respectively."We have estimated that the meat and fat supplied by the body of an adult Palaeoloxodon antiquus bull would...

Fort Myers, Fla. (WSVN) — A fossil enthusiast near Fort Myers stumbled upon an extraordinary find, unearthing a fully intact mammoth jaw believed to be around 10,000 years old from the waters teeming with alligators. John Kreatsoulas, the fossil finder from Fossil Junkies Dig and Dive Charters, expressed his amazement. “I grabbed onto it just to hold on for a second and I realized ‘Wait a second, that’s not a tree, that was a mammoth,'” he said. The remarkable discovery was made in an area known for its alligator presence. Currently working to restore the ancient jaw, Kreatsoulas plans to...

Based on sites excavated in the western United States, archaeologists know Paleo-American Clovis hunter-gatherers who lived around the time of the extinctions at least occasionally [emphasis added] killed or scavenged Ice Age megafauna such as mammoths. There they've found preserved bones of megafauna together with the stone tools used for killing and butchering these animals...Unfortunately, many areas in the Southeastern United States lack sites with preserved bone and associated stone tools that might indicate whether megafauna were hunted there by Clovis or other Paleo-American cultures. Without evidence of preserved bones of megafauna, archaeologists have to find other ways to examine...

Meat consumption is coming under fire from a number of different parts of society, but now a savvy firm that blends the worlds of science and food might have a solution that can keep everyone happyA meatball has been made using the DNA of a woolly mammoth, and apparently, it wasn’t very difficult. The miraculous feat of making a meatball out of something that hasn't existed for more than 4,000 years was achieved by an Australian outfit called Vow. The resurrection approach is a fresh take on meeting the growing demand from consumers who don’t want to kill anything to...

<p>A mammoth meatball has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals.</p><p>The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis.</p>

Colossal recently added $60 million in funding to move toward a 2027 de-extinction of the woolly mammoth. The Dallas-based company is now working to edit the genes for the reincarnation of the mammal. Colossal planned to reintroduce the woolly mammoth into Russia, but that may shift. The long-dead woolly mammoth will make its return from extinction by 2027, says Colossal, the biotech company actively working to reincarnate the ancient beast. Last year, the Dallas-based firm scored an additional $60 million in funding to continue the, well, mammoth gene-editing work it started in 2021. If successful, not only will Colossal bring...

A team led by Hendrik Poinar at McMaster University unlocked secrets of the creature's nuclear DNA by working with a well-preserved 27,000-year-old specimen from Siberia. Colleagues at Penn State sequenced 1 percent of the genome in a few hours and say they expect to finish the whole genome in about a year if funding is provided... "While we can now retrieve the entire genome of the woolly mammoth, that does not mean we can put together the genome into organized chromosomes in a nuclear membrane with all the functional apparatus needed for life," said Ross MacPhee, a researcher at the...

Scientists have sequenced a nearly complete woolly mammoth genome, which should bolster efforts to resurrect the Stone Age zoological rock star. Working with two mammoth specimens excavated from different parts of Russia and from different eras -- one nearly 45,000 years old, the other just 4,300 years old -- an international team of scientists has sequenced a nearly complete genome for the extinct pachyderm. The achievement provides the most complete snapshot yet of what a woolly mammoth was, which also means we're as close as we've been in a few thousand years to seeing, in person again, what a mammoth...

Commentary: A research project to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from oblivion reignites debate about de-extinction. A preserved thylacine body lies curled up on a metal table. Two scientists in white lab coats handle the body. PIC at LINK (Getty) The preserved body of a thylacine being prepared for display in an Australian museum in 2005. When Hank Greely, a law professor at Stanford University, took to the stage at 2013's TEDx De-extinction conference in Washington, DC, he posed a simple question. "De-extinction," he started. "Hubris? Or hope?" The answer, he offered to a smattering of laughter, was "Yes." Greely's...

Researchers from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) have identified the remains of a mammoth in the town of Los Reyes de Juárez, Mexico.The mammoth was uncovered in one of the towns municipal cemeteries whilst workers were preparing new graves.Upon further inspection, biologist Iván Alarcón Durán identified that they were the bones of megafauna from the Pleistocene, with initial studies suggesting the remains are an elderly male Columbian mammoth.The Columbian mammoth (mammuthus columbi) inhabited North America as far north as the northern United States and as far south as Costa Rica during the Pleistocene epoch. DNA studies shows...

Researchers with Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) found and extracted a mammoth tusk deep under the ocean. According to MBARI, their team spotted the tusk 185 miles offshore and 10,000 feet deep on top of a seamount in 2019. They returned on July 2021 to bring the tusk to the surface. "The researchers have confirmed that the tusk—about one meter (just over three feet) in length—is from a Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi)," reported the institute. They believe it could be the oldest well-preserved mammoth tusk recovered from this area of North America. The Columbian mammoth went extinct around 11,500...

Previous studies had indicated that while most mammoths likely died out around 10,000 years ago, a few had managed to survive in small populations on remote islands off the coast of Siberia. There had even been suggestions that some of these isolated island populations had held on until around 4,000 years ago. Now though, the results of a ten-year study involving the collection and analysis of 535 samples of sediment and permafrost from Siberia, Canada, Alaska and Scandinavia have yielded evidence to suggest that mammoths had still been roaming the wilds of mainland Siberia as recently as 3,900 years ago....

Researchers discovered four charred seeds of a wild tobacco plant within the hearth contents, along with stone tools and duck bones left over from meals. Until now, the earliest documented use of tobacco came in the form of nicotine residue found inside a smoking pipe from Alabama dating to 3,300 years ago. The researchers believe the nomadic hunter-gatherers at the Utah site may have smoked the tobacco or perhaps sucked wads of tobacco plant fiber for the stimulant qualities offered by the nicotine it contained. After tobacco use originated among the New World's native peoples, it spread worldwide following the...

Like many 6-year-olds, Julian Gagnon likes to pick things up off the ground. Sticks, rocks, you name it. Earlier this month, he made his most important discovery yet. Important enough to garner the attention of University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology. Julian found an ancient mastodon tooth during a Sept. 6 hike with his family at Dinosaur Hill Nature Preserve in Rochester Hills. UM museum scientists verified its authenticity, and Julian will donate it to the museum to ensure its preservation. Julian is probably the first person to touch the tooth in 12,000 years, said Adam Rountrey, the paleontology museum’s...

That’s a rare find in Florida! A giant bone of a Mammoth dating back to the Ice Age was just found in the Peace River near Arcadia this week. The 4-foot, 50-pound bone is well over 10,000 years old! For two Florida scuba divers, ancient history resurfaced when they discovered a 4-foot, 50-pound mammoth bone dating back to the ice age. Derek Demeter and Henry Sadler, both avid explorers and amateur paleontologists, made their big discovery when diving in the dark waters of the Peace River near Arcadia on April 25. “[Henry] came up, and he’s like, ‘Derek, I found...

Scientists have identified the largest ever assemblage of mammoth bones. team of scientists has discovered the largest collection to date of mammoth skeletons in one place, just outside Mexico City. The researchers have counted more than 200 individual mammoths to date—and believe there are still more to discover. In 2018, the government announced the development of a new Mexico City airport at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base, north of the city. People have found mammoth remains in the northern part of the city and the wider region since the 1970s. So, Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava, the national coordinator of...