DE-EXTINCTION

Pliocene earthworm

 

Those of you who have visited me here in Borrego Springs will know that the flat alluvial sediment filling the Borrego valley is adorned by many dozens of full-sized metal sculptures memorializing many of the more charismatic extinct animals that lived here only a few million years ago.  Mammoths, giant sloths (as big as the mammoths), several horse species, pigs, large, strange bears, other carnivores of many kinds, super-sized camels – we had ‘em all.  Now, alas, all we have to remember that rich fauna by are a bunch of rusting replicas – and, of course, the bones we of the ABDSP Paleontology Society so carefully collect, clean, and curate.  What a loss!

But wait; a breakthrough is, or may be, in the making.  According to the NYTimes, serious efforts are being made to bring extinct animals back into existence – to de-extinct them, so to speak.  It would work something like this:  Someone would somehow extract a healthy cell from, say, one of our mammoth fossils.  Next, that cell would be subjected to a series of processes that reverse its specialization and turns it back into a “pluripotent” stem cell.  Then the nucleus of this rejuvenated mammoth would be inserted into a de-nucleated elephant egg, implanted in a pregnant lady elephant, and carried to term.  Voila!  The great woolly mammoth once again strides the earth!

But there are a few problems.  For one thing, for the cost of de-extincting the mammoth we could save dozens of existing species from going under in the first place.  Moreover, where would the mammoths live?  Not here in Borrego, for certain – since their time the climate has turned far too hot and dry.  The Pacific NW would work:  it would be fun to dodge something bigger than a deer when driving around Bellingham.  And some extinct beasts really shouldn’t be revived.  We don’t want saber-toothed cats eating the WWU student body, do we?

But I admit that it would be fun to watch a tank-sized ground sloth slowly devouring the foliage in front of Old Main.