Bringing Back the Dead: Mammoths pt. 4 A Colossal Undertaking.

In a bit more distant future:

A helicopter swoops down through the ancestral valley. Inside, five nervous passengers struggle with seatbelts in the back compartment, while the pirate ignores them, listening to centuries old John Williams music to tune them out.

The trees sway under the wind pressure of the vehicle’s rotors the helicopter swoops in for a landing.

There's a crew waiting just off the helipad to take the passengers bags and load them onto the waiting trucks. The owner of the helicopter, and all of the surrounding land, has spared no expense to make this an engaging welcome, nor should he. After all his investment has run into trouble, and three of the people he's brought out to this location are here to help him save his project. The fourth is a blood-sucking lawyer, who is supposed to be on his side but had been growing progressively more concerned about the liability of such a colossal enterprise.

The people who rush up to the helicopter to usher everyone into their vehicles are all wearing matching uniforms, stiff brown parkas to shelter then against the freezing wind, and the skeletal logo of the parks prime attraction.

They walk the experts to their vehicles and send and soon the heavy winter weather jeeps are on their way. Everything is winterized. Despite the clear weather now, a storm is brewing on the horizon, the climate has been, for a while now, unpredictable.

“I thought your park was supposed to help stop all of this!” The lawyer protests to the investor when he learns of the upcoming storm.

“What did you expect?” The grey bearded investor asks, “That an instant solution to centuries of human action would be mitigated by this small piece of Siberian Wilderness?”

“It's what you promised the board.” The lawyer shouts back, continuing to voice his concerns. “We’ve already overrun every deadline you've ever proposed, and the board is getting nervous. They are concerned your park may become more of a money sink than the Labrea Tar Pits."

But the investor just rolls his eyes and closes the door on him. He wants to ride with his experts, the people he knows will be taken in by the wonder he, and everyone before him has built.

The ride gets off to a bumpy start. He can tell the paleobotanist is annoyed. She wants to investigate the lush vegetation which has been grown as part of the experience, but their vehicles were locked in transit. He knows that their first stop will be worth it. He can arrange for some of the previously thought extinct crops to be served with dinner, as part of a salad maybe. The fruits and veggies outside were edible after all, they were all variants of crops humans had eaten only a few decades before, before the fertilizer blight of 2137.

So, the cars drive on, through the pine trees and recently planted crop fields, and through the massive gate which the board had assured him would be a big tourist draw, and finally up a granite hill and over a rise.

One of the monitors had been tracking the animals, and the lead driver know where to steer everyone for the perfect view.

The scientists were still talking about the miraculous site of wheat, and cabbage, but their chatter died down when they noticed the heard of animals outside, grazing on the higher elevation of the step. For a moment there was shocked silence, and then the paleontologist spoke, “Is that a...?” His excitement was obvious, it was splayed across his face in a wide smile.

It was.

One of the tall, furry elephantine creatures approached the front vehicle. Its weight thundering across the ground and shaking both jeeps. (The investor might have told his maintenance crew to adjust the shocks for just such an occasion.) And when the giant woolly mammoth got even closer it raised its trunk, trumpeting in excitement.

“That's a woolly mammoth,” the investor explains. One of the first. “He's one of the many mammals we've been able to bring back from the ice.”

“Can we get out, and see him closer?” His question, like all of their conversation, is broadcast wirelessly between vehicles.

“I’m afraid not.” The investor answers. “His tusks are rather formidable, and he’s the proud defender of his herd, with a fierce temper.” The Lawyer is frowning, because he is the only one of the guest knew that it was just such an incident which had gotten them in their current hot water. They had let the last team of appraisers out of the trucks, against the safety advice of the Australian game warden, and the previous paleontologist had gotten an extra close up view of those mammoth tusks. “But drive us up the ridge where we can get a better view of the other wonders.” The investor instructs the drivers.

He says it to distract himself from the mess that the other paleontologist had gotten them in, and memories of the poor mess that paleontologist had become.

In the other vehicle, the lawyer and his mathematician friend watch the mammoths too. Noticing the dollar signs flashing behind the Lawyer's eyes at his first sight of the majestic animals he cackles. The vehicles move forward, and all of the scientists sit up in their seats. Their view across the horizon expands to include the entire valley below, and an ecosystem not seen in Siberia since the last ice age. The Mammoth Steppe, named for the creatures said to have cultivated the environment.

The paleobotanist and the paleontologist lock eyes then turned to take in the scenery below them. A Giant ground sloth sits next to a large pool, which had been formed because of a massive mega-beaver dam. Another herd of Mammoths migrates across the plain. And next to them a smaller herd (but not as much smaller in stature as one might think) of woolly rhinos tramples over the grassy terrane.

“Woah.” It was the only word the paleontologist could utter, before the investor, tickled with the display as though he had arranged it chuckled. Looking back at them to survey their reactions.

“Dr. Murphy, my dear Doctor Muldoon. Welcome to Pleistocene Park.”

 End.

The Pleistocene, an era which looms large in our imaginations, because we were there. Our ancestors anyway. It was a period of time from roughly 2.58 million years ago, to about 11,000 years ago. (The lack of specificity makes it sound more scientific.) And humans popped up sometime within that range. It also looms large in our imaginations because it’s an era of Megafauna. A fancy way of saying Giant Animals. Giant Beavers. Giant Ground Sloths. Giant Rhinos. Tigers with giant teeth. More species of elephants. (The ones which are still around are giant.)

These supersized creatures roamed the earth during the last great glacial period, and as those glaciers melted, they began to go extinct. Was it a giant meteorite/comet like the one which killed off the dinosaurs? No. Was it a massive climatic upheaval caused by the creation of a super continent like the one which may have lead to the rise of said dinosaurs? (It’s speculated that the cause for the Triassic Extinction Event was the formation of Pangea, which created large continental deserts, wiped out a lot of shallow seaways and dramatically changed the ecology of Early Mesozoic Earth.) Was it the introduction of a new and toxic gas, like the one which almost wiped out all life on earth? (Oxygen, in the Pre-Cambrian). It was none of these.

Our world would be doing much worse if we’d been hit by another dino-killer rock/ball of ice. Also we’d have record of it in cave paintings, and oral tradition. Continents move slowly, so things were mostly in the same place 11,000 years ago, so it wasn’t that. And Nothing as dangerous as oxygen has been added to the atmosphere since nasal singing, and fortunately that hasn’t reached the 27% saturation levels necessary to immediately kill off +- 90% of all life on earth.

The last 2.5 million years were chill. Litterally, (being part of a glacial cycle.) So most of those large animals seem to have kept a coat of fur, It’s possible that the warming climate did them in. It was also possible that it was us. As has been proven by the finds of mammoth kill pits, and petroglyphs showing how early man hunted them, (and other furry megafauna,) we know that our ingenuous forbearers were able to take on their much larger prey.

Whatever the case, about 11,000 years ago, the large swaths of the last Pleistocene megafauna began to die off. Down went the dire-wolves, the saber-toothed tigers, the elasmotherium, the cave bear, and of course the woolly mammoth. While ancestors of many of these megafauna still exist, we missed out on the world with Armadillos the size of tanks, and giant roving ground sloths, and even bigger and scarier bears. Mammoths managed to hang on a bit longer than most, (until the time of the pyramids,) but only by hanging out on islands on the edge of the world. Now, they are gone.

I had the idea for this 2 blogs back, but didn’t do it. I didn’t have any good ideas for pictures this time, and ran out of time because I had to do a lot of research, so here is my representation of Mammoths helping to build the pyramids.

But just because we missed out on them then, doesn’t mean we have to go without them forever.

We may be able to bring— some of— them back. Not through time travel. Not through direct cloning either.

Instead, the best method for bringing these creatures back might be gene editing. We don’t take the long dead DNA from other organisms, and use that genetic material to clone them. We map their DNA, find a close living relatives with similar DNA, compare them, and then Identify the distinctive genetic markers which make the old creature special, edit those into the new creature and make a baby. Simple.

Using mammoths as an example. We map the preserved Mammoth DNA. Then we Identify the closets living relative of mammoths. we compare and contrast, finding the distinct parts of a Mammoths Code which make them Mammoth. We edit those distinct codes into the relative’s DNA and we use that to produce a Mammoth-like creature.

The first step is already complete. As early as 2008, scientists were beginning to map the genetic code of mammoths from DNA found in their hair. (article here.) Hair DNA was better that other DNA because the hair protected the DNA from infiltration by parasites, viruses, and bacteria. The second step is complete too. Even before the complete genetic map of Mammoth DNA we had already learned that mammoths shared the most DNA with modern Asian Elephants. (article here.)

As early as 2005 there was talk of potentially using these DNA maps to bring back the Mammoth.

De-Extinction, bringing back extinct animals, was a process discussed much earlier, but it was really brought to light by the movie and book, Jurassic Park around 1993. And as the rise of our genetic understanding paced our ability to edit those genes and clone, people were already thinking about making that sci-fi story into real life.

In the late 1990’s, (and perhaps earlier.) Paleontologists began talking about the idea of bringing dinosaurs back. Not using preserved Dino DNA, but instead editing modern animals to express traits similar to dinosaurs. Birds are dinosaurs closest living relatives, and what better bird than the chicken. Work has been done to get chickens to express ‘dinosaur like’ genes. This work has given us chickens with teeth, and it seeks to give us chickens with long tails, and more. Chickenousaurus is the proposed name for such future creatures. (article here)

But Chickenosaurs are missing one key component of attempts to de-extinct pliestocene, (or more recently extinct animals.) We do not have dino-dna. At best, we can edit chickens, or other birds, to express traits similar to their long-lost ancestors. But we aren’t bringing those long lost ancestors back. We are basically human-guiding convergent evolution. This is the process were genetically distict organisms pick up similar traits. (Dolphins, sharks, and marine reptiles, all developed, (seperately,) dorsal fins and tail fins for example.)

Perhaps you can argue that this is one step closer than traditional convergent evolution pathways, (typically, positive triats which help an organism survive in a niche, might reappear on different animals which occupy similar niche's,) because the chicken is a t-rex relative. But, I don’t expect you to call me Grandpa Cheek if someone edits my genes to express my great grandfather’s dark curly hair. (and Chickens and dinosaurs are at least 65 million years further removed.)

Mammoths, (and other potentially de-extincted animals from the recent path,) have a distinct 1-up in the race to return. And that is the fact that we have access to their DNA. With estimates as high as “Millions” of fossils preserved in permafrost, and at least 20 distinct sources of mammal DNA from mammal hair balls. (balls of harvested mammoth hair, not balls lodged in their throats.) we have the ability to actually Identify the segments of DNA in mammoths which are different and use those as instructions on which parts of an Asian Elephant’s DNA we’d have to edit, and how we’d have to change it to make a modern mammoth.

This still wouldn’t really be a clone of a mammoth. It’s probably best described as a Mammoth-elephant hybrid. Especially since the donor egg, and the birth parent will have to be modern elephants, (unless artificial womb technology gets a lot better.) But it would be much closer to a mammoth than if we took the chickenosaurus route and simply spliced elephant genes to express traits we think of as ‘mammoth.’

This isn’t the first method proposed to bring back mammoths. This is the modern approach being suggested, after years of research identified it as the most likely way to work. Without Time-travel, access to uncorrupted gametes, or unaltered stem-cells from preserved mammoths, Mapping the disinct genes of preserved mammoths, and then editing the genes of modern elephant cells to mimic them is probably the best way to go about ‘bringing mammoths back.”

At the end of the day, what we get is still a mammoth flavored elephant, but it will resemble Mammoths enough to take the term hybrid seriously. Of course, if we want a viable population of mammoths, or any other Pleistocene animals, then we are going to need to do this multiple times, using distinct and varied lines of genetic code, so that each of the individual mammoth-elephant hybrids birthed is an individual, with enough genetic distinction to help sustain a breeding population.

So. Can we bring back the Mammoth?

Yes, it seems like we might be able to.

There are still some hurdles, but already a company is working towards it. That company, whose name has been hinted at throughout these blogs, is known as Colossal. And they are the pre-eminent headline grabbers when it comes to discourse on De-extinction of semi-modern organisms. Here is there website, check it out if you want. Colossal . They actually do a pretty good job of breaking down their plans. (with much better graphics than I can supply.)

But if you don’t want to check it out,

I’ll walk you, one more time, through the experimentally derived ‘best method’ for making a modern mammoth, with all the hiccups in the way.

Step 1. Find and Map well-preserved Mammoth DNA

(Now we need to repeat this step with as many individual mammoths as possible, so we can actually get individuals.)

Step 2. Identify the closest living relative to Mammoths, which would also be a good host for future hybrids.

(This is why African Elephants are still in the running, they are better sized to carry Mammoth Babies.)

Step 3. Map the DNA of these mammoth Elephants.

(Done.)

Step 4. Compare an contrast. Mammoth DNA to Asian Elephant DNA.

(Here is where we run into our largest problem to-date. Elephants and Mammoths share 99.9% of their DNA, according to the closest think I could find for a research article about this (a national geographic article here.) ((I could have spent longer looking for it, but am going with the most optimistic version of this contrast to view this process from the lens of the most viability.)) Elephants have over 3 billion base pairs. This means that mammoths have at least 1 million distinct amino acid coding genes different from or non-existent to when put against elephant DNA.) Thats 1 million individual genes which will need to be changed to turn an elephant into a mammoth. If we wanted the hybrids to express as the most mammoth like.

Step 5. Edit the DNA of Asian Elephant stem cells to make them more mammoth like.

(This would mean as many as 1 million different edits using CRISPER. Although there are efforts to make bulk-editing a possibility, this is still early days. So targets expressed by Colossal (in the above National Geographic article) are for more than 60 genes to be edited. ((A very elephant flavored, mammoth sprinkled, elephant.)) Another article states that scientists have been successful at identifying 45 genes that code for traits which would make these hybrids more cold resistant.) (Here’s that article.)

Step 6. Use those stem cells to replace the nucleus of a fertilized elephant embryo.

(this hasn’t been done yet, because it requires step 5, but since work has been done on this in other mammals, it’s probably feesable.)

Step 7. Implant and birth those hybrid embryos.

This means either getting an Asian elephant to birth the hybrid, or maybe an African Elephant. Or perhaps, as preferred by Colossal, (and hinted at two blogs ago) an artificial womb.

(Any of these methodologies will have their own problems. Asian Elephants are too small. African Elephants are more distant relatives, thus more likely to reject embryos. And Artificial wombs are early days. And if I’m reading the papers correctly, are now only almost able to cary late stage but premature embryos potentially to term. We are ??? steps away from a fertilized cell —> Birthed mammal artifical womb. (Here is an article about an artificial womb bringing lambs almost to term.)

Repeat steps 5-7 multiple times to get multiple mammoths.

There’s a lot of fudging in those last few steps. Several larger hurdles to cross, however, my final answer (an opinion based upon research but no experimentation of my own.) is

Yes we Can bring back mammoths. I think that the within 10 years deadline, is probably a little optimistic. (We’ve already blown past the original timeline and budget for the proposed project) But can we bring back mammoths? Yes.

However, as a certain cinimatic chaotician would point out. We are missing an equally valid question.

I’ve spent so many articles wondering if we can bring back mammoths, but have a stopped to think about whether or not we should?

I have, and I’ll give my opinion on that next time. When I finally wrap up this colossal miniseries.

so. stay tuned.

In the meantime, I will remind you that my book. The Specters of Mammoth Cave, which has everything to do with Mammoth Cave and nothing to do with Mammoths, indirectly inspired this research dive. Also, and I will be mentioning this with increasing frequency over the coming months, I hope to be doing a book signing in Bowling Green Ky, for The Specters of Mammoth Cave sometime during the spooky season. (around October.) So check out the book now, or look for me there then.