You know what side of the moral equation I’m on. As soon as I saw this 30,000-year-old baby dinosaur, my first thought was, “Clone that shit!”
Being part of the recovery of Nun cho ga, the baby woolly mammoth found in the permafrost in the Klondike this week (on Solstice and Indigenous Peoples’ Day!), was the most exciting scientific thing I have ever been part of, bar none. https://t.co/WnGoSo8hPk pic.twitter.com/JLD0isNk8Y
— Prof Dan Shugar (@WaterSHEDLab) June 24, 2022
Source: On June 21, 2022, a near-complete, mummified baby woolly mammoth was found in the Klondike gold fields within Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Traditional Territory. Miners working on Eureka Creek uncovered the frozen woolly mammoth while excavating through the permafrost. This is a significant discovery for Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin and the Government of Yukon. Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named the mammoth calf Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal” in the Hän language.
The Yukon has a world-renowned fossil record of ice age animals, but mummified remains with skin and hair are rarely unearthed. Nun cho ga is the most complete mummified mammoth found in North America.
This recovery could not have happened without the collaboration between Brian McCaughan of Treadstone Mining, Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin and the Government of Yukon. In the months to come, Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin and the Government of Yukon will work together to respectfully preserve and learn more about Nun cho ga and share these stories and information with the community of Dawson City, residents of the Yukon and the global scientific community.
What a find. I still say we clone these things asap, and Harvard scientists say the same thing.
Using recovered DNA to “genetically resurrect” an extinct species — the central idea behind the Jurassic Park films — may be moving closer to reality with the creation this week of a new company that aims to bring back woolly mammoths thousands of years after the last of the giants disappeared from the Arctic tundra.
Flush with a $15 million infusion of funding, Harvard University genetics professor George Church, known for his pioneering work in genome sequencing and gene splicing, hopes the company can usher in an era when mammoths “walk the Arctic tundra again.” He and other researchers also hope that a revived species can play a role in combating climate change.
“We are working towards bringing back species who left an ecological void as they went extinct,” the company, Colossal, said in answer to questions emailed by NPR. “As Colossal actively pursues the conservation and preservation of endangered species, we are identifying species that can be given a new set of tools from their extinct relatives to survive in new environments that desperately need them.”
What could go wrong other than everything you’ve seen in Jurassic Park movies. Spielberg wants to scare us away from fucking with Mother Nature, and if Jeff Goldblum was right (“Nature always finds a way), we just need to get the ball rolling with a few Elephant/Mammoth clones for the species to make an arctic comeback, and I’d love to see it.
A wooly mammoth boom is just what a divided world needs—a distraction. Bringing a species back after a 20,000-year hiatus would do the trick.
Holy smoke! 😮 A baby mammoth has just been discovered by a Yukon gold miner😍 It is more than 30000 years old! Preserved by permafrost ice❄️
Press release here: https://t.co/1tcIk5LEom pic.twitter.com/HT6Nramf6K— Secrets Of The Ice (@brearkeologi) June 24, 2022
Discovered by placer miner who called Grant Zazula @yukonberingia, who put out call to any geologists in area to recover before it thawed. We were incredibly lucky to be in Dawson w Jeff Bond & Derek Cronmiller from Yukon Geol Survey. Was a fast drive down 60km of mining roads.
— Prof Dan Shugar (@WaterSHEDLab) June 24, 2022
These giants present an excellent opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell $5000 mammoth rides, mammoth burgers, etc. That’s why Harvard genome scientists were just given a $15 million grant to splice DNA from Mammoths with Elephant DNA.
Christians will HATE it. Zoologists will love it, and Russians will turn them into pets which is fine by me because it’s not a fucking T-Rex.
DB
