Mammoths and tigers and bears, oh my!

[lee_merrill]

There is work in progress to revive the wooly mammoth and the tasmanian tiger! No T-Rex, sorry.

Source: Genetic Literacy Project

[Paleontologist Michael Archer] is part of the “de-extinction club”: a growing group of scientists working to harness genetic engineering and cloning to reach into the past – and resurrect extinct animals. Top of the list are the thylacine and the woolly mammoth.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Blessings,
Lee

[rogue06]

There is work in progress to revive the wooly mammoth and the tasmanian tiger! No T-Rex, sorry.

Source: Genetic Literacy Project

[Paleontologist Michael Archer] is part of the “de-extinction club”: a growing group of scientists working to harness genetic engineering and cloning to reach into the past – and resurrect extinct animals. Top of the list are the thylacine and the woolly mammoth.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Blessings,
Lee

I wish him luck, since I know that there has been several attempts at cloning mammoths that don't seem to have gone very far. That's why I wish that the article went into at least some detail about what exactly he plans on doing. As this piece, Revive & Restore’s Woolly Mammoth Revival Project by the Embryo Project at Arizona State University from early this year makes clear, there are difficulties

Researchers broadly define de-extinction as a method for reintroducing extinct species. However, the methods of de-extinction that researchers participating in the Woolly Mammoth Revival Project pursue would not lead to a perfect biological replica of a mammoth. The only chance to precisely recreate an extinct animal would be through cloning, a process of creating a genetically identical organism using the DNA of a host. DNA is the genetic information found in every living organism that carries the instructions an organism needs to develop, live, and reproduce. However, researchers cannot clone mammoths because cloning requires living cells, whereas other genome editing methods do not. Since one of the last species of mammoths went extinct around 4000 years ago, scientists are unable to acquire any living cells needed to clone the animal itself.

Because cloning is not an option in the case of the woolly mammoth, Revive & Restore researchers are attempting to use genome editing and engineering to make mammoth-like species instead of perfect replications of mammoths. Genome engineering is a technique that enables researchers to make changes to an organism’s genome, which is its set of DNA. There are many technologies that equip scientists to edit an organism’s genome and change how it will develop and function. Researchers from the Woolly Mammoth Revival Project are experimenting with CRISPR-cas9, a genome editing tool derived from bacteria that involves cutting out specific sequences of DNA and replacing them with other sequences. In the case of the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth, scientists would edit the Asian elephant genome to make it more similar to the genome from the woolly mammoth.

The available genetic material available from dinosaurs is nowhere even close to being what's needed to clone anything from regardless what what anyone saw in Jurassic Park.

[NorrinRadd]

I want a wooly rhino, a smilodon, and a... eh... that armadillo critter with a spiky tail. Can't recall its name. Wait! Glyptodont!

[Ronson]

Tasmanian tigers are cool.

[Ronson]

Or how about the ringdocus

ringodocus.jpg

[rogue06]

I want a wooly rhino, a smilodon, and a... eh... that armadillo critter with a spiky tail. Can't recall its name. Wait! Glyptodont!

Stegosaurus had the spiky tail


As for terrestrial mammal...

Indricotherium (Paraceratherium): A hornless rhino-relative as tall as a giraffe built like a long-necked and legged rhinoceros.

SameerIndricotherium-56a2544f5f9b58b7d0c91bc0.jpgparaceratherium-t.jpg

[NorrinRadd]

Stegosaurus had the spiky tail

Most famously, sure. So did polacanthus and several ankylosaurs, if you count spikes along the length of the tail.

I had a small toy one of these -- glyptodont -- at least 50 years ago:

glyptodont.jpg

As for terrestrial mammal...

Indricotherium (Paraceratherium): A hornless rhino-relative as tall as a giraffe built like a long-necked and legged rhinoceros.

SameerIndricotherium-56a2544f5f9b58b7d0c91bc0.jpgparaceratherium-t.jpg

Nice.

I was always a fan of brontotherium. "Only" about eight feet tall at the shoulder, but still cool.

brontotherium.jpeg

[rogue06]

Most famously, sure. So did polacanthus and several ankylosaurs, if you count spikes along the length of the tail.

I had a small toy one of these -- glyptodont -- at least 50 years ago:

glyptodont.jpg



Nice.

I was always a fan of brontotherium. "Only" about eight feet tall at the shoulder, but still cool.

brontotherium.jpeg

Forgot about Doedicurus having spikes, but AFAICT Ankylosaurs had clubs at the end of its tail (many did have spikes that ran along the sides of its torso)

[rogue06]

And then there were Amphicyons ("Bear dogs") basically like a wolf with bear-like body weighing in at around half a ton

Amphicyon-ingens_reconstruction.jpg





And Daeodon (a.k.a., Dinohyus), a pig relative the size of a hippopotamus

GettyImages-1133035827-84d7525c9f0f4897a82c8a79cb429548.jpg




Fight club! An Amphicyon and a Daeodon

daedon-and-bear-dog-fighting-jaime-chirinosscience-photo-library.jpg

If the bear dogs were pack animals this would be interesting, but since they likely weren't, this would likely go to the true One Bad Pig

[NorrinRadd]

Forgot about Doedicurus having spikes, but AFAICT Ankylosaurs had clubs at the end of its tail (many did have spikes that ran along the sides of its torso)

IIRC, "Ankylosaurus" was the last and largest of the whole class of "ankylosaurs," and yeah, he had the club-tail. I just took a quick refresher look at a book I got a few years ago, and discovered that, contrary to my toys and models from the '60s and '70s, the "experts" no longer believe his branch of the family tree had side-spikes. They seem to believe that the "tail-club" branch and "side-spikes" branch were separate; but then they provide artist renderings that totally contradict the text. And it's pretty obvious that anything about their appearance is based on a small bucket of bones and a warehouse of speculation.

[rogue06]

IIRC, "Ankylosaurus" was the last and largest of the whole class of "ankylosaurs," and yeah, he had the club-tail. I just took a quick refresher look at a book I got a few years ago, and discovered that, contrary to my toys and models from the '60s and '70s, the "experts" no longer believe his branch of the family tree had side-spikes. They seem to believe that the "tail-club" branch and "side-spikes" branch were separate; but then they provide artist renderings that totally contradict the text. And it's pretty obvious that anything about their appearance is based on a small bucket of bones and a warehouse of speculation.

That bucket has grown -- a LOT.

Here's one they found in Canuckistan back in 2017 that is effectively a fossilized mummified ankylosaur

RB-COMPOSITE-DINO.jpgoriginal.jpg

Here's one from a bit earlier, a Scolosaurus that IIRC was pieced together from a couple of different specimens.

1280px-Scolosaurus_thronus_-_Royal_Tyrrell_Museum.jpg

And here are a couple of fossilized ends of their tails

9e9u52js4js21.jpgankylosaurusWC4-58b9ac223df78c353c21ca35.jpg

[Ronson]

IIRC, "Ankylosaurus" was the last and largest of the whole class of "ankylosaurs," and yeah, he had the club-tail.

So, they got their name by clubbing people in the ankles and leaving them sore. Hence, my "ankle is sore-us."

[rogue06]

So, they got their name by clubbing people in the ankles and leaving them sore. Hence, my "ankle is sore-us."

At this point the smart move is to claim you let your daughter/granddaughtertype that out

[lee_merrill]

I wanna heffalump! And here is a Ted talk by Michael Archer, describing his work.

Blessings,
Lee

[Sparko]

Seems like mammoths should be the easiest to revive. They share a large portion of DNA with the elephant. So they could use elephant DNA for any missing bits, and an elephant could act as surrogate mom for birthing/raising.