With todays modern technology, humans have the opportunity to possibly bring exctinct species back to life, such as the famous wooly mammoth, the neaderthals, the dodo bird, and many others. Scientists is Austrailia attemted this by adding the nucleus of cell from an extinct frog, . They were successfull with getting the cells to divide, but it is unlikely the cells will continue to grow. Another attempt was done by some scientists in Spain who cloned an extinct goat species, but the goat had a 3rd lung which made it hard to breathe properly and it died with 10 minutes. Now scientists are saying that creating stem cells of the ancient DNA would enable them to make sperm or egg cells that contain the extinct species' genetic code. 
The reason this has been brought up is because truthfully, humans are the cause of many extincions of species on earth. This is due to habitat loss, over-hunting, and a climate change created by humans. It is estimated that the world will loose half of all it's species by the end of this century, which is really sad. Even though it would be a good thing to bring back an exinct species, it may be dangeroud and unhealthy for the world. Species have accustomed to their lives and it would be like bringing an invasive species into an environment. Also, the extinct species has never lived in the world the earth is today and it would be unpredictable if the species would thirve or fail. NOS Themes
Role of curiosity: Scientists wondered if it would even be possible to bring back a species and some experiments are showing that is he furure it may be possible
Science is subject to debate and tentative: Some scientists are not sure if it is a good idea to bring back species because they are not sure if it will affect the environment badly and don't want the world to forget about the species being brought to extinction.
Article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=de-extinction-to-bring-back-extinct-species-but-challenges-conservation
Other Info
14 species that could be resurrected: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/14-extinct-animals-that-could-be-resurrected/fit-to-be-cloned
I am surprised scientists are willing to take the risk with resurrecting these species. I don't know if these species would be able to be reinstated into their natural environments smoothly.
ReplyDeleteThis seems a lot like Jurassic Park to me, but cool nonetheless. I already knew that scientists were trying to do this king of thing to clone organs, but extinct species is a whole other animal. I think it would be very interesting how a neaderthal, or any other Extinct specie would respond to the today.
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