• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Mammoth find: Preserved Ice Age giant found with flowing blood in Siberia

Status
Not open for further replies.

Grym

Member
Arent mammoth just hairy elephants? Its like wanting to clone a polar bear when you already have a grizly

No. It would be more like scientists cloning a man with nice hair when all they have left is a bunch of bald men. The man with hair is obviously far superior to all the cue balls.
 
You gotta pardon my ignorance guys, but how exactly do they create a mammoth out of this? Sure they have the blood and Im sure scientists will figure out how to fill in the blank sequences, but then what? What is the next step? Its not like a mammoth magically appears. Do they inject the blood into something like an elephant and then eventually a mammoth is born? Do they only get one shot? (I know I have no idea what Im talking about, but some info here would be great. Ive always been in the dark about this stuff).

Oh no, once you got DNA you can easily replicate it (well, okay, not easily). Then they can just try to create a clone until they get it right, and it's like you said - just use an elephant egg, scoop out the inside, inject it with the chromosomes of the Mammoth, and implant it in an Elephant.
 

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
Clone this motherfucker.

We need to preserve as many species as possible.
Then we should start cloning elephants since they're endangered.


I just think that someone would end up trying to kill the mammoth for it's ivory tusks. ;[
 

Zeknurn

Member
Man Moth?
images

Same thing crossed my mind. Well done.
 

Clydefrog

Member
I’d probably pee my pants if I was chiseling at some ice and mammoth blood came pouring out.

“OH GOD SOMEONE GET THE BUCKET – QUICK”
 

Bazza

Member
I didn't think blood could do that. Thats a bigger discovery than the Mammoth, isn't it?

Evolution is powerful, there is a fish (cod I think) that has evolved to the point where it does not freeze so its not like its not been seen before but the fact a mammal's blood potentially has the same property's makes it worth looking into.
 

bengraven

Member
I love how modern scavengers are eating at it.

"You going to eat this? No, no clue how long it's been in here, but I'm hungry."
 

Mgoblue201

Won't stop picking the right nation
Excuse my ignorance...I tend to not fully grasp (or remember) some of these scientific things. But does that half-life change if the specimen is frozen like these mammoths? Or is half-life essentially constant and not dependent on temperature.
The Nature article seems to indicate that:

The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of −5 ºC, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years. The DNA would cease to be readable much earlier — perhaps after roughly 1.5 million years, when the remaining strands would be too short to give meaningful information.

Since it's the molecular structure of the DNA that's decaying, it's effected by a variety of things such as the presence of micro-organisms.
 

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Would prefer that the money that would be spend cloning them is spent protecting living elephants tbh.
 

Router

Hopsiah the Kanga-Jew
Someone hurry up and find a frozen Dire Wolf.

If they ever make clones, wouldn't reintroducing it to wildlife be counterproductive? We have horrortales of introductions of animals where they shouldn't be (rabbits in australia).

Now I'm imaging going out to get the paper in the morning and having to shoo away half a dozen mammoths.
 
I vaguely remember an episode of Northern Exposure where one of the town locals found a Mammoth carcass in the snow, hacked it up with a chainsaw and then stocked his freezer to have meat to eat from.
 

Fantasmo

Member
This part wasn't in the OP, might as well throw this in since it was part of the quoted article:

Last year a deal was signed giving South Korean scientists exclusive rights on cloning the woolly mammoth from certain tissue samples found in the Siberian permafrost. Stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk's private bioengineering laboratory confirmed he is poised to make a bid to return the extinct Siberian mammoth to the planet.

Once the tissues have been treated to a nuclear transfer process, the eggs will be implanted into the womb of a live elephant for a 22-month pregnancy.
 

.GqueB.

Banned
You gotta pardon my ignorance guys, but how exactly do they create a mammoth out of this? Sure they have the blood and Im sure scientists will figure out how to fill in the blank sequences, but then what? What is the next step? Its not like a mammoth magically appears. Do they inject the blood into something like an elephant and then eventually a mammoth is born? Do they only get one shot? (I know I have no idea what Im talking about, but some info here would be great. Ive always been in the dark about this stuff).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMsJe3TymqY
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom