I believe I heard some scientists theorize that they’d bring back the wooly mammoth by degrees. They’d insert (somehow, I don’t know) enough DNA into an elephant and make an elephant that is 1/16th mammoth. Then they’d do the same to that elephant’s offspring making it 1/8th mammoth, and so on until they have a mammoth (or most of one). I don’t remember the source on this one though.

You got me … virtually!

Cheers and enjoy the read.

AussieID

…bringing back an individual is not the same as bringing back the species.

You can’t bring back a species if it’s not something that actually exists.

So if a species was restored, what would that tell us?

Thank you for the compliment. I will try to live up to your expectations as we go forwards.

I agree with you, the environment in the womb, and the interaction between mother and developing child is very important and dynamic process. There is even some evidence that there is influence at this stage on issues such as eventual homosexuality of a male – neatly dropping into a crack between genetics and choice in that debate. So being forced to raise the first generation by proxy in another animal’s womb is an issue for bringing back some species. It would become less so if you could create a breeding population – this was part of my point on making a distinction between bringing back an individual and a species.

Anyway I have to think that we have no clue how to recreate the womb of an extinct animal. Pretty skeptical about that.

Well Nakashima, I virtually disagree with EVERYTHING you write,…

Great, that is so much better than actually disagreeing with virtually everything I write! Please alert me if ever I do write something you agree with, I’ll try to have it corrected to be more dogmatically materialist before the Darwin Police break down my door.

I thought you remarks on thylacines very interesting. Maybe we could collaborate on posts for UD in a “Point/Counterpoint” style!

Thanks for that. I was a bit worried about the other competititors, but will happily accept the prize!

Well Nakashima, I virtually disagree with EVERYTHING you write, but I don’t mind walking up to the dais and holding the book high with you. Now, do I get to have the book for the first six months and then we swap, or do you get the first half of the chapters and me the other and we’ll swap later?

We’ll work on that one!

Thanks again, Denyse, for the competition. I’ll appreciate a good summer’s read!

Cheers

AussieID

Thank you! With the recent post about the continued success of Signature in the Cell in the marketplace, I look forward to getting and reading a copy. I’ve followed very closely the chapter summaries posted by Mr Deyes.

This question of behavior was a large concern of Richard Dawkins in his book, The Extended Phenotype. As with releasing zoo-bred animals into the wild, recreating a species from DNA would be an interesting test of his ideas.