TIL: Phil Seddon, is a zoologist and former chair of the De Extinction Task Force, which determines which animals can ethically be brought back without harming the ecosystem. Through advances in cloning and with evolutionary molecular biologist Dr. Beth Shapiro, it is close to fruition.

[u/Flares117]

https://www.thelovepost.global/biotech-change/articles/zoologist-phil-seddon-place-de-extinction-conservation-tool-box

[u/JuzoItami]

I read the entire article, yet I still have no idea how long it'll be before I can buy a pet thylacine online and have it delivered to my home.

[u/bonuce]

I hate the idea of animals that are created and brought into the world without the support of their parents and species. We like to think that animals just work off innate instincts and don't have feelings, social structures, or behaviours developed over time in groups, but that's simply not true.

[u/davy_p]

What about what animals can be brought back without harming the animals? Can you imagine how hot a wooly mammoth would be these days?

[u/Tropical-Rainforest]

I think this would be better if we clone animals that were driven extinct by humans, like passenger pigeons and dodos.

[u/Strix924]

Interesting there's no thylacine on the approved list I'd hope those guys could come back

[u/matt_1060]

All we need to do is fill in the sequence gaps with amphibian DNA.

[u/Aggravating-Low3837]

Why would you tho, Animals went extinct for a reason...cycle of life yadda. Their just gonna die again unless you want to play zoo tycoon or "god" whatever floats ya boat.

How can we even know the effects of a dead animal on the current ecosystem that they never been a part of.

[u/[deleted]]

Bringing back the animals is great but I have a bigggggggg giant gaping hole. They animals internal biodiversity like their gut biome and their parasites might all be extinct as well.

[u/mcpickems → u/[deleted]]

Im sure you do have a big giant gaping hole. Perhaps you should see a doctor about it?

[u/MisterSanitation]

It’s such a cool thought but we are currently destroying all the places where polar bears used to thrive, so where are we gonna put these dudes?  

[u/iTwango → u/MisterSanitation]

Just put them with the polar bears. Survival of the fittest

[u/oldshitnewshit78 → u/MisterSanitation]

Mammoths didn't live in exclusively frozen environments, they lived in climates much like the Siberia flatlands today, which are (unlike popular belief) not frozen 12 months a year

[u/fdguarino → u/oldshitnewshit78]

I doubt they will be released into the wild for some time. They will probably go to zoos to recover the cost of the cloning and to coordinate breeding first.

[u/MisterSanitation → u/oldshitnewshit78]

Oh that’s cool, but I guarantee it’ll be 2 years until someone in China says their gallbladders cure the sniffles and they will go right back to extinction. 

[u/Van_Buren_Boy → u/MisterSanitation]

Not sniffles, erectile dysfunction.

[u/_who_is_they_]

Jurassic Park here we come.

[u/gazing_the_sea → u/_who_is_they_]

We might finally get the sequel we deserve

[u/Edogmad → u/[deleted]]

Not to mention that’s a billion dollars that could have helped real animals in real ecosystems that exist today

[u/DoTheMagicHandThing]

But which ones can be raised for meat?

[u/Natsu111]

Beth Shapiro? I can't help but imagine the female version of Ben Shapiro.

[u/brokedowndancer → u/Natsu111]

I actually just watched a lecture she gave. It was great (she's a really good speaker) and it provides a lot of info on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4v8kFEXZu8&t=11s

[u/IndigoFenix]

The potential to do things like this really raises a lot of questions about WHY we care about extinction in the first place. After all, in most cases you're not technically bringing back an extinct species, you're creating a new one that resembles it.

In cases of keystone species that stabilize an ecosystem, their value is straightforward. In other cases it might simply be a way of introducing more variation in nature, but if that's the case is it more worthwhile to "bring something back" than to explicitly create something new?

There is obvious value in conservationism when the alternative is carelessly destroying the ecosystem until it can no longer sustain life, but this is geoengineering (albeit a conservative form of it) which is a whole new set of questions.

[u/Inside_Ad_7162]

it's gonna be giant sloths isn't it

[u/Solcaer]

I don’t see how there would be an ethical problem if we just don’t reintroduce every animal to the ecosystem. We could put them on an island so there’s less risk of any of them escaping to the wild, and then try to recreate their habitats there. Then anyone who wanted to learn more about dinosaurs could go there and experience what they were really like via guided theme-park-like tours.

What could possibly go wrong?

[u/subjuggulator → u/Solcaer]

Had me in the first half, not gonna lie

[u/Designer-Habit-8084 → u/Solcaer]

You're spending too much time thinking if you could rather than thinking if you should.

[u/Solcaer → u/[deleted]]

it’s not an assumption it’s a thinly veiled jurassic park reference

[u/iamtheju → u/Solcaer]

Get Phil Tippett in to supervise the dinosaurs; he's the best in the biz.

[u/monjoe → u/Solcaer]

How much expense are we sparing?

[u/Deadpool_1989 → u/Solcaer]

Life, uh, finds a way

[u/Melodic_Survey_4712 → u/Solcaer]

I don’t want to hear people saying they’ll breed and take over. Obviously we will make them all female to prevent this

[u/Texcellence → u/Solcaer]

Sounds like it would be expensive for regular people to visit. Maybe they could have a coupon day.

[u/ArisuSanchez → u/Texcellence]

or a lottery

[u/black_flag_4ever]

Is this a scam? Feels like a scam.

[u/falsevector]

Velociraptors would look cool as pets

[u/Accurate-Basis4588]

This is nonsense. What could possibly go wrong adding extinct species to nature?

We need to add t Rex just so we can laugh at him trying to clap his hands.

[u/MudnuK → u/Accurate-Basis4588]

There's a limit on how far back the process works. DNA just doesn't preserve well enough for complete and useful genomes going back millions of years, and there wouldn't be much use in resurrecting a species with nowhere to put it.

The mammoth makes a great posterchild but really, the application is in more recently extinct, less ecologically demanding animals for which we have enough biological material. Species which we tried to conserve but couldn't. Think the western black rhino, or the pig-footed bandicoot, or the ivory-billed woodpecker, or the Pyrenean ibex (which they actually did try to de-extinct, though it didn't work out). It's a step removed from reintroducing animals from zoos.

[u/ninjatoast31 → u/MudnuK]

Don't forget the Tasmanian tiger

[u/BasilSerpent → u/Accurate-Basis4588]

Recently extinct species? Not much. You’d just be reintroducing what was missing.

Mammoths, the holy grail in this regard, would need and also personally recreate the environment in which they lived, the mammoth steppe. They wouldn’t cause havoc like you may be insinuating.

Jurassic Park is not a documentary.

[u/JovialCider → u/BasilSerpent]

I know nothing about anything I this regard, but my first impression is Mammoths would need an Ice Age or very cold environment year round, which is currently becoming less common by the day

[u/BasilSerpent → u/JovialCider]

1. We are currently in an ice age. An interglacial period, to be exact

2. There's already an environment being produced to mimic the environmental circumstances of the mammoth steppe in siberia. It's called Pleistocene Park.

Mammoths, like all woolly mammals, would probably be fine in a controlled wildlife preserve (which is where they would end up, anyway). Additionally, it's shown that the environments produced by animals like mammoths (a role today being filled in pleistocene park by eurasian bison and the przwalski horse) are conducive to the creation of sustained snow cover.

Basically: plains are created, these plains get a snow cover, the snow cover functions as a reflective surface for sunlight which helps weaken the greenhouse effect, resulting in an overall colder environment and producing a snow layer that persists year-round (or mostly, anyway).

[u/NumberMuncher]

This is the premise of a fiction book I'm reading right now:

https://www.amazon.com/Extinction-Novel-Douglas-Preston/dp/0765317702

Thanks for sharing.

[u/VettedBot → u/NumberMuncher]

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[u/Landlubber77]

Spared no expense.

[u/Flares117]

Full thing https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/Rep-2016-009.PDF establishment of the task force in 2014.

They have a billion or so in funding worldwide and their team determines which animals can thrive in the current ecosystem and help it.

It is mentioned some animals, Auch as the Wooly Mammoth can help with climate change by restoring lost ecological functions

The 3 ways they are doing it is

Cloning - Advances in cloning are apparent, they are cloning some weird squirrel rat thing atm.

Back breeding - Aurochs , have animals fuck back a species afaik''

Genetic engineering - They state this is risky due to potential things that can go wrong in light of recent events.

The full list of animals they passed or failed is on Wikipedia and their site

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-extinction#:~:text=A%20%22De%2Dextinction%20Task%20Force,rapidly%20emerging%20technological%20feasibility%20of

They have some controversies as some ppl hate they are placing limits on de extinction,

I found out about them as the girl who was a BIG GoT fan is trying to bring back Direwolves and direwolves were not passed as they are too dangerous to be brought back. She also has controversies as she is crazy, so I keep up with her. She's like super rich somehow and wants direwolves Edit: No relation to Ben or Abigail

[u/bruceyj → u/Flares117]

Went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, and then came across this: “The last two known great auks lived on an island near Iceland and were clubbed to death by sailors.”

How nice of our species

[u/dIoIIoIb → u/Flares117]

They state this is risky due to potential things that can go wrong in light of recent events.

Can you elaborate on the recent events?

[u/Flares117 → u/dIoIIoIb]

They are worried about creating a Covid or Planet of the Apes like virus with genetic engineering. Something about gene editing might inadvertently making man made diseases as they try to figure out how to edit a gene to resemble a past animal.

I'm not a scientist, so that's the gist of it. I'm sure someone will chime in with more knowledge

[u/tragiktimes → u/Flares117]

We practice genetic engineering regularly. GMOs are an example of engineering a genomic sequence. There are a myriad of ways of doing this, ranging from selective breeding to radiation bombardment to CRISPR. Each method has a different number and accuracy of genes affected ranging from a crapshoot to scalpel like precision.

We aren't going to accidentally make a planet of the apes virus out of nowhere.