Just Because Science Can, Should We Bring Mammoths Back into Existence?

Could we be visiting a real life Jurassic Park sometime soon in the future? Scientists have the capabilities of genetically engineering long extinct species such as the woolly mammoth, passenger pigeon or other extinct species but the topic for discussion at a conference later on Friday, is should they?

The National Geographic Society will be hosting the TEDxDeExtinction, a public forum from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET in Washington. Speaker will examine the rapid advances in molecular biology and new conservation perspectives which are creating a new field called "de-extinction." The daylong conference will include discussions of the ethical issues raised if extinct species can be brought back. Those questions include whether they should be released back into the wild and which species should be chosen. So far, dinosaurs have been taken off the list.

The talk will be streamed live online at LivestreamTEDx and National Geographic's De-Extinction website, which also has other resources on the issue. Speakers include Chris Anderson, curator of the TED Conference talk series, Australian paleontologist Michael Archer and Spanish researcher Alberto Fernández-Arias, who has worked on cloning a now-extinct goat.

So what exactly is "de-extinction"? "It's using new technologies like cloning and genome sequencing to reconstruct a species that went extinct," science writer Carl Zimmer said, who has also written a cover story on the topic for National Geographic's April issue. One of the more popular topics regarding de-extinction is the idea of bringing the 12,000-year-old woolly mammoth back to life. Scientists are trying to find ways to re-invent this ancient species, but the task at hand is not a simple one.

A team of scientists led by North-Eastern Federal University of Russia said last September that they have discovered frozen wooly mammoth fragments that could contain living cells. Carl says this is one option scientists have to look at for trying to raise this species back from the dead, but it is not necessarily the most feasible.

The report notes that scientists would need these living cells in order to produce millions of cells, which could then be implanted in surrogate elephants. However, Zimmer says most scientists doubt that any living cell could have survived freezing on the open tundra.