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| Left: Smilodon (Photo by Tiberio) and the Dodo Bird (Photo by Thomas Quine) are two of the 24 animals scientists want to bring back from extinction. |
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A recent New York Times Magazine article "The Mammoth Cometh" describes how scientists are trying to bring extinct animals back from the dead.
This is based on research presented last year at a National Geographic-sponsored TEDx conference, where scientists met to discuss which animals would be good candidates for, as they called it "de-extinction."
They chose the animals using the following criteria: Are the species desirable — do they hold an important ecological function or are they beloved by humans? Are the species practical choices — do we have access to tissue that could give us good quality DNA samples or germ cells to reproduce the species? And are they able to be reintroduced to the wild — are the habitats in which they live available and do we know why they went extinct in the first place?
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