Last year, Colossal Biosciences, based in Dallas, Texas, raised $75m to support its efforts to bring the mammoth back to life, this time using genome editing. Genetic engineers can already insert cold-tolerant genes into plants to enable them to grow in cool conditions, and Colossal plans to do the same with modern Asiatic elephants. Their stated aim is “to see the woolly mammoth thunder upon tundra once again”.
As these large animals trampled about over the tundra snatching trunkfuls of vegetation, they left irregular gaps in the plant cover, allowing different species to thrive. Their hooves created deep prints in which plants could germinate, and their urine and dung provided richly nutritious islands of opportunity for germinating seeds.
It was this diversity of land surface, broken up by heavy limbs and randomly fertilised by urine and faeces, that supported so much flora. Without the mammoths, that diversity disappeared. Return them and landscapes would once again thrum with an array of species, including flowers and bushes.
True, it’s not de-extinction in the sense of bringing a long-dead species back to life. Instead it’s more like making a “dodo” by engineering a modern pigeon, its closest relative, to become huge and flightless. The result would be a big, fatty pigeon that, whether it looked like a dodo or not, would probably fulfil some of its ecological roles.
