Posted on 02/28/2013 7:32:53 PM PST by NoLibZone
LONG BEACH (CBS SF) – Speaking from the prestigious TED Conference in Long Beach Wednesday, Sausalito activist Stewart Brand said scientists are developing the ability to reassemble an extinct animal’s genome, and even recreate the animal itself.
Brand, who gained fame after he campaigned to have the original NASA space photos of earth published, and subsequently created the Whole Earth Catalog, said Wednesday that “de-extinction” could be used to help restore organisms and habitats damaged human activity, according to a report in the Marin Independent Journal.
A team of Harvard geneticists are currently working to bring back the passenger pigeon, which has been extinct since 1914, according to the TED website. The passenger pigeon is considered a keystone species because it aided the survival of the buffalo, according to TED. Researchers believe it may now be possible to alter the genetic makeup of a close relative, the band-tailed pigeon, to re-engineer the passenger pigeon.
The Jurassic Park-like science was already used to recreate an extinct variety of wild mountain goat in 2010, but the animal died after just minutes due to a lung defect, reports TED.
Brand said he hopes advancements in the field will help reverse some of the damage done to earth by humans.
(Excerpt) Read more at sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com ...
Watch how fast the libs reject science.
Can they recreate a patriotic Conservative Democrat ? Now that would be a feat.
If scientists can alter a species to create a new (or old) species, then it should be child’s play for them to use cells from endangered species as a hedge against extinction. Therefore the Endangered Species Act is no longer needed.
Thanks NoLibZone.
Yeah, I saw that movie. Things didn’t work out too well so don’t go to Costa Rica or wherever that park is.
This is great. So long natural selection. We want to bring back 1,000,000 head herds of buffallo and the pterodactyl.
Picture the two day back up on I-80 in Western Wyoming while they waited for a herd of Buffalo to cross the interstate.
Poppycock. The real keystone species was the American Indian. They farmed the forest for acorns. When the Indians died off from smallpox, they no longer gathered so many acorns. The passenger pigeon numbers then exploded in a classic trophic irruption.
“Poppycock. The real keystone species was the American Indian. They farmed the forest for acorns. When the Indians died off from smallpox, they no longer gathered so many acorns. The passenger pigeon numbers then exploded in a classic trophic irruption.”
Sorry, I got to call you on this. Sources?
There are a lot of caveats here.
The feasibility of recreating an extinct species would depend a lot on how intact DNA from fossils is. The older the fossils, the less likely the DNA will be intact.
Species are not collections of individuals, but are populations with characteristic gene frequencies. To try to recreate the gene frequencies of a new population, there would have to be intact DNA from several fossilized individuals.
And then, there would have to be a modern relative of the species to act as a parent for the recreated extinct animal. I’m not sure how that would work out.
Trying to bring back something like an ancient dinosaur would be considerably more difficult. Without intact DNA, scientists would have to try to trace genetic trees backwards and deduce ancient sequences. I do not think it possible to recreate genuine dinosaurs, although we could probably come up with (ancient) dinosaur-like creatures. We have plenty of modern dinosaurs to work with... birds.
Not acorns... beech nuts.
And the reduction in beech tree numbers had a whole different cause.
And the endangered Ivory-billed woodpecker replied:
“Beech? Birch? Gee I dunno `bout that ... all I know is it was the best piece of Ash I ever had my pecker in.”
Yeah, hey. Whoah!
Doesn’t this totally violate the laws of Darwinism?
Just what we need, the saber tooth tiger and T Rex back. :)
I don’t see a problem, provided they stay away from Velociraptors. Things always go badly when those damned Velociraptors are recreated.
It was in Wilderness & Political Ecology, Aboriginal Influences & the Original State of Nature, by Dr. Charles Kay, Utah State University. The book is not indexed so it would be time consuming for me to dig out the precise page and associated reference, but Kay's work is usually heavily documented (the bibliography is over 70pp).
First scholarly abstract I found,
Further, we propose that consumption of vast quantities of acorns by pigeons during the spring breeding season may partially explain the dominance of white oak (Quercus alba) throughout much of the presettlement north-central hardwoods region.
Looks like "not acorns" is incorrect.
I think this is one of the sources, maybe?:
I’d point out tht “paucity of pigeon bones” in archaeological sites where scientists expected them to be abundant, while thought provoking, isn’t very good evidence for assuming the species was ever rare. There were Indian tribes which lived in areas with abundant fish that wouldn’t touch them, and no fish bones are to be found, while a nearby village of the same time period seems full of them. There were other tribes that wouldn’t hunt turkey because they believed they were stupid and it might rub off, some tribes where turkey or porcupine were considered fit for women to hunt but not men, and other tribes which would not hunt bear because it was thought to be a “brother.”
And then there is another more obvious explanation fo the “paucity of bones” that is not addressed. Let’s say they did hunt pigeon extensively, but did as many modern hunters do with quail and removed just the breast meat for consumption while leaving the rest. If they did just take the breast, no bones would be found in the village by later archeaologists, no matter how abundant the birds were.
It’s simply not worth it to keep marginal parts like wings and feet when the best meat is so easy to take and the birds were plentiful enough to make it easy to load up on the good stuff. Why spend valuable time cleaning birds when you can use that time to hunt more of them and bring home much more meat? Think economy. What purpose would there be in carrying bulky whole pigeons all the way home when all you are really going to use is the breast?
If anything you would be more likely to find the bones if the species were RARE or a delicacy, and food difficult to obtain, as the carcasses would be needed to extract every last bit of nutrition, for making broth and soup just to survive. Deer are another matter- deer bones would be hauled home when needed to extract marrow, make arrowpoints, fish hooks, hide scrapers and hoes, but pigeon bones weren’t worth the trouble.
Bison were at times slaughtered by commercial hunters just for the tongues and hide, leaving a lot of t-bones and even porterhouse just laying out on the prairie to rot. Contrary to myth, Indians have indeed been known to waste overly abundant resources as well, they just didn’t have a written language to report the deeds. We have found ancient buffalo jumps where so many animals were killed that only a portion of the animals killed were actually butchered.
There’s really very little reason to expect to find abundant pigeon bones in a village dig, or to theorize that failure to find them indicates they were not abundant in that period.
Is it just me or does it seem like we are starring in a bad
Sci-Fi picture?
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