Mammoths, extinctions and cloning

Since there was a little interest in this topic created as a result of a throwaway pun in another topic, I thought I'd post this here in case anyone wanted to explore the topic in more detail.

One of my greatest regrets is that mammoths are extinct, because I want to meet a live one.

The cause of their extinction was when humans moved into their terrority, they brought a bloodborne infection to which they and their dogs were immune, but mammoths were not, which was transferred to the mammoths by fleas jumping off and biting them.
This is evidenced by the fact that the very last mammoths have the bone deformations resulting from this infection.
The disease causes excess calcium nodules to form on the bones and specifically the joints, which would have caused excessive joint pain and therefore, hindered the mammoth from travelling around to harvest their food sources.

For the record, humans did not hunt mammoths into extinction, the cooking fire/refuse sites from that era are full of deer bones, there are no mammoth bones to be found at any of them.
The reasoning behind this is a mammoth is a powerful foe, no hunting party would risk fighting a herd of them when there's smaller and easier animals to chase.
An elephant is a formidable opponent even today and they are much smaller then any mammoth was.


At the moment, the only hope for me to meet a live mammoth is that the cloning experiments are successful in bringing back at least one.
Although for the experiment to be very successful, they'd need to clone an entire diverse population, enough to be genetically viable and sire offspring the natural way.

The main problem with mammoth cloning is they need a specific specimen type, one that was flash frozen at time of death or shortly afterwards, because ice crystals slowly forming would destroy the DNA strand and make that specimen non-viable for cloning.

A while ago, there was a scientist who was specifically searching for such specimens, so he could extract the necessary genetic material and create a viable mammoth embryo, but I don't know if he ever found what he needed.
He was specifically needing two specimens, one male and one female, because it would enable him to adapt the artificial insemination process instead of making a genuine genetic clone.
I think he wanted to do that because it was much easier than cloning.

I do remember sometime in the early 80s, they found a mammoth who met those conditions, for 90 seconds, they actually managed to restart the mammoth's heart before it died (again).
A pity they didn't keep the samples the scientist needed, if the mammoth could be temporarily revived, then the internal organs were preserved enough to make that possible.

Video of discussion about scientists cloning mammoths :D

I would dearly love to see a mammoth in real life, and it represents one of the best hopes for resurrecting extinct species (finding viable specimens of others is difficult, though there is currently an effort to sequence thylacine DNA, and the dodo bird has already had its DNA sequenced).

But you're right in that the ice crystals would cause DNA damage. Though I'm a scientist I'm not a geneticist, but its my understanding that it causes the DNA to fragment (so you will see snippets of DNA, but not intact strands). Now once that used to be a big insurmountable problem (to do a PCA you need intact strains) but there are newer techniques that make it possible to sequence even from only fragments (the problem is putting it back into the right order, which takes computational power). They are really prohibitively expensive, but the cost of sequencing keeps dropping (a bit like Moore's law for computing power). If we can live long enough, I have great confidence we'll live to see a mammoth.

Here's a link to the Science article on efforts by two independent groups to obtain a mammoth sequence https://www.researchgate.net/profile...ly-mammoth.pdf

So while freezing damage is definitely an obstacle, its not an insurmountable one. The trick for cloning would be to find a host species (elephant) and then gradually across several generations make it more and more mammoth like with technology like CRISPR. Going to take big resources (more than you and I could dream of) but there are enough crazy billionaires out there that we might have a shot yet :)

And yes, if you could find a male and female specimen for implantation, that would dramatically reduce the funding costs. That would be like a dream come true for us all!

That article was definitely an interesting read, as it shows they've done significant research on finding out the genomic/genetic structure.
As far as I know, DNA is just composed of five basic elements, Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine, Thiamine and Urasol (from RNA/tRNA), but the hard part is getting the sequence right to create the genetic effects desired, in this case, writing the code for a mammoth.

This is how ice crystals damage organic tissue, when the crystals form slowly, they cause the cellular structure to swell up like a balloon and pop, making the biological material too fragmented to use.
That's why flash frozen specimens are the ones they are seeking, because they froze too rapidly for the ice crystals to form inside the cells.
I think the specific criteria is an animal that fell into a lake during winter and died due to hypothermic shock, then was encased in ice afterwards and never thawed, not even once.
The one mammoth they managed to temporarily revive must have met those requirements, as it was found near a polar research station.

What the scientist specifically needs is reproductive gametes, one from a male mammoth and another from a female mammoth, if they're preserved enough, he can combine them in a lab and then use an elephant as a surrogate without needing to know the code at all.
And then if he got a successful live specimen, naturally that baby mammoth would provide all the DNA needed for a proper sequencing.
I'm wondering though, would they have to induce birth early because a mammoth calf is larger then an elephant calf?
Or would the size difference only be noticeable later in life, as the mammoth reached full maturity?

The elephant surrogate in question might also be problematic, as I remember a first time mother getting very confused about what she'd just given birth to, until the keepers pulled the baby upright and she could recognise a baby elephant.
So an elephant giving birth to a mammoth might also be a bit confused at first.
If I was overseeing this process, I'd choose an experienced elephant mother, one that'd had at least one successful pregnancy and thus, less likely to have panicked reactions to a strange offspring.

Also, you'd need at least one matriarch elephant in addition to the surrogate, since pregnant elephants naturally seek out the company of an experienced mother to act as their midwife.



Being an Australian, the loss of the Thylacine species is indeed my greatest regret and even more so because there was still one live specimen in the 1950s.
I'm assuming if ever we master the genetic recreation technology, it would be far simpler to bring back the Thylacines if we have the right samples.
I think about 10 years ago, the scientists started pulling every Thylacine biological sample they could find from museums, looking for reproductive gametes and genetic codes viable enough for the recreation process.

However, my primary hope is that one day, they find that some Thylacines still exist in the wild and it's a sustainable population.
Given how stealthy they were known to be when they were alive, it's unsurprisingly we can't find them if they're still around.
if that was to happen, I'd love to meet a living Thylacine as well.


I remember they were sequencing Dodo DNA when a debate surfaced about what bird family it belonged to, the major proponents insisted the bird was related to chickens and turkeys, but they were proven wrong when the test results came back, the Dodo is a ground dwelling pigeon.
Like the mammoth before it, the Dodo was also a victim of accidental extinction, when human settlers colonised the islands where the Dodo lived, their pigs trampled the nests and ate the eggs.
Because the Dodo was the apex lifeform, they'd never had a competitor before and thus, were not prepared for one to arrive.