Scientists want to harness advances in genetics, ancient DNA retrieval and artificial reproduction to bring back the extinct Tasmanian tiger.
Scientists want to resurrect the striped carnivorous marsupial, officially known as a thylacine, which used to roam the Australian bush.
"This technology offers a chance to correct this and could be applied in exceptional circumstances where cornerstone species have been lost," he added.Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images European settlers on the island in the 1800s blamed thylacines for livestock losses , and they hunted the shy, seminocturnal Tasmanian tigers to the point of extinction.Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images, named Benjamin, died from exposure in 1936 at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. This monumental loss occurred shortly after thylacines had been granted protected status, but it was too late to save the species.
Once the team has successfully programmed a cell, Pask said stem cell and reproductive techniques involving dunnarts as surrogates would "turn that cell back into a living animal." The team hasn't set a time line for the project, but Lamm said he thought progress would be quicker than the efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, noting that elephants take far longer to gestate than dunnarts.The techniques could also help living marsupials, such as the Tasmanian devil, avoid the thylacine's fate as they grapple with intensifying bushfires as a result of the climate crisis.
Recreating the full genome of a lost animal from DNA contained in old thylacine skeletons is extremely challenging, and thus some genetic information will be missing, explained Gilbert, who is also director of the Danish National Research Foundation's Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics. He has studied resurrecting the extinct Christmas Island rat, also known as the Maclear's rat, but isn't involved in the thylacine project.
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