Finding the mammoth carcass and the process of reviving ancient elephants

On June 21, workers working at the Klondike gold mine in Canada’s westernmost Yukon territory found a complete set of baby mammoths. Thanks to being buried deep below the permafrost layers, the carcass of the species that was recruited 4,000 years ago is preserved almost intact, with skin and hair even still attached to the body.

Mammoth carcass in Canada

Through detailed analysis, it was a young female woolly mammoth, which lived more than 30,000 years ago. Before the specimen was so unbelievably intact, Dr. Grant Zazula, a member of the research team shared: “As a paleontologist specializing in the study of the Ice Age, one of life’s biggest dreams I was the first person to see a real mammoth. Today it came true. Nunchoga (name of specimen) is beautiful and is one of the most amazing animal mummies ever unearthed in the world”.

Photo: Yukon Government

Gen Crispr editing Technology

This specimen will be a big step forward, playing a key role in the revival of the mammoth and beyond, the revival of extinct animals. The specimen will be a source of DNA for the research of scientists and more specifically the project of the Colossal company with the mission to create a new species with characteristics like a mammoth, resistant to climate change. and loss of biodiversity.

Photo: Vinmec

Using CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology, using DNA obtained from specimens, scientists through genetic engineering have created a hybrid between an elephant and a woolly mammoth, with looks like an extinct ancestor.

Reviving the mammoth

As a first step, scientists will create a hybrid Asian elephant by culturing embryos containing mammoth DNA in the laboratory. They will take skin cells from Asian elephants and edit them into more flexible stem cells containing mammoth DNA.

The embryos are then inserted into the surrogate mother’s body or through an artificial uterus. If all goes well and without a hitch, the team hopes to have their first pups within six years. “Our goal was to create a hybrid elephant that can withstand temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius and has the appearance and behavior of Asian elephants and mammoths,” Church said.