From a wire report in Sunday's San Jose Mercury News:
Team of scientists hatches plan to revive mammoth species
Reuters
LONDON----Scientists are mounting an expedition to Siberia to seek out frozen mammoth sperm and bring the extinct species back to life, the Sunday Times has reported. The newspaper said the plan was to use the frozen sperm to fertilize elephants' eggs and breed hybrids. "Cross-breeding with successive generations would allow the hybrids gradually to become pure genetic copies of their mammoth ancestors," the report said.
Today's Sunday Times said British, Russian and Japanese researchers were involved in the project.
Mammoths--large hairy elephant like creatures---died out some 30,000 years ago, but their remains have been found in several places in Siberia.

To which DRaftervoi, the world's foremost cryptobiologist replies:

There are so many things wrong with a wire report like the above that it is almost impossible to know where to begin. Usually bad reporting like this shows up in the World Weekly News, where passing Journalism 101 isn't a prerequisite for employment, but this is in a respected paper, from a well known news agency.

1.. To begin with....."scientists" are mounting an expedition...pray tell......WHAT are their names? What museums, research institutes or private companies are they working for? Who is paying for this expedition?

2. They plan to fertilize an elephant's egg*....well, the mammoth line diverged from that of the two separate elephant lineages leading to the African and Asian elephants about 4,000,000 years ago, with the emergence of Mammuthus subplanifrons in Africa. As the species have been separate and distinct for over 4 million years, what are the odds that they could possibly interbreed?

3. Frozen Siberian mammoth carcasses are extremely rare. Siberia isn't like a meat locker at your local supermarket. And Siberia is B I G, much larger than the continental USA. How, exactly, are they going to find a carcass?

4. Since most of the frozen Siberian mammoths found are dated to two periods between 10,000 to 13,000 years ago, and before 30,000 years ago, what makes them think that any sperm recovered would be alive after all that time? And why not just clone the thing, anyway? If they can clone a sheep, why not clone a mammoth and eliminate all that cross-breeding? And beside, elephants are pretty much exactly the same thing as a sheep, only bigger and with a haircut. This ought to be easy!

5. "....died out some 30,000 years ago." One would THINK that the Sunday Times of London would employ a fact checker with a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica at his side. Mammoths died out 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in most places. However, discoveries in 1993 of mammoth remains on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean were conclusively dated to between 7,000 and 3,700 years old. While man was building Stonehenge and the Pyramids, mammoths were alive on Wrangel Island. Mammalian species isolated on islands evolve a smaller size to deal with the reduced resources present on an island, which means the these mammoths also have the deliciously contradictory name of Dwarf Mammoths.

While I personally think that the wire report is a JOKE, I wish them the BEST of luck in their endeavors. I have never had the privilege of EATING a mammoth, and if I am lucky, they will soon be serving up MAMMOTH BURGERS at a fast food franchise, soon. And I'll bet that mammoth does NOT taste like chicken.

DRaftervoi 1998

Writing to you from Chateau DRaftervoi, "The House That Pork Built"

*and with the exception of the notorious case of HORTON, as reported some decades ago by the world-renowned crypto-biologist, Dr. Seuss.....who ever heard of an elephant laying eggs????

archives

main

write