'De-Extinction' of the Woolly Mammoth May be Possible with a Nearly Complete Genome

Scientists may be a step closer to bringing back the woolly mammoth. A team of researchers has sequenced the nearly complete genome of two Siberian woolly mammoths, revealing the most complete picture of this animal to date.

Scientists have long argued that climate change and human hunting were major factors behind the mammoth's extinction. This new data, though, suggests that there were multiple factors at play over the course of their long evolutionary history.

In this latest study, the scientists produced high-quality genomes from specimens taken from the remains of two male woolly mammoths, which lived about 40,000 years apart. One had lived in northeastern Siberia and is estimated to be about 45,000 years old, and the other was probably part of one of the last surviving mammoth populations and lived about 4,300 years ago on Russia's Wrangel Island.

"We found that the genome from one of the world's last mammoths displayed low genetic variation and a signature consistent with inbreeding, likely due to the small number of mammoths that managed to survive on Wrangel Island during the last 5,000 years of the species' existence," said Love Dalen, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The new research also reveals that the animal populations had suffered and recovered from a significant setback about 250,000 to 300,000 years ago. However, another decline occurred during the final days of the Ice Age.

"This discovery means that recreating extinct species is a much more real possibility, one we could in theory realize within decades," said Hendrik Poinar, the senior Canadian scientist on the project. "With a complete genome and this kind of data, we can now begin to understand what made a mammoth a mammoth-when compared to an elephant-and some of the underlying causes of their extinction which is an exceptionally difficult and complex puzzle to solve."

The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).