In 2011, a baby woolly mammoth was found stuck in the permanent ice of Siberia. This was a nearly complete specimen of a species that had been extinct for almost 4,000 years was a big deal, especially since this one was 28,000 years old. But scientists were eager to find out if the mammoth’s biological elements are still alive today. Now, scientists at Japan’s Kindai University have found that most of its DNA is still there, which means they are close to bringing this huge prehistoric animal back to life.
In any case, experts at the university were able to take nuclei from the mammoth’s cells and put them into mouse oocytes, which are cells in the ovaries that can divide genetically to make an egg cell. After that, the cells from the 28,000-year-old thing started to show “signs of biological processes.”
The study’s author, Kei Miyamoto of Kindai University’s Department of Genetic Engineering, said, “This shows that cell activity may still exist and parts of it can be replicated even after years have gone.”
Five of the cells even did very strange and interesting things, like showing signs of activity that is usually only seen right before a cell divides.
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It wasn’t easy to figure out if the DNA from the mammoth could still work. First, the scientists took bone marrow and muscle from the animal’s leg. These were then looked at to see if there were any intact structures that looked like nuclei. If there were, they were taken out.
After putting these nuclei cells within mouse oocytes and mouse proteins together, it was found that some of the baby woolly mammoth cells were fully able to rebuild their nuclei. In the end, this showed that there might be active nuclei in mammoth bones that are 28,000 years old. So, bringing a creature like this one back to life is not entirely impossible.
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Miyamoto says, “we are very far from reconstructing a mammoth.” Still, many researchers who are trying to do it through genome editing are hopeful that success is on the horizon. Recent efforts, which use the controversial CRISPR technique to change genes, are probably the most promising.
But is it really necessary to bring back a species that hasn’t lived for a long time?
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A well-preserved baby woolly mammoth from 30,000 years ago was also discovered recently this year in Yukon’s permanent ice. It is helping to mend fences between the Tr’ondk Hwch’in and the miners and scientists who came to their land.
The specimen was named Nun Cho ga, which in the Han language means “big baby animal,” and was found to be surprisingly intact. The trunk, ears, and tail of little Nun cho ga, the baby woolly mammoth, are almost as good as they were when it was alive.
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Travis Mudry, a miner in Canada’s Yukon territory who worked in the Klondike goldfields, cut into a wall of permafrost, or permanently frozen earth, on a rainy June morning. A big piece of frozen earth suddenly fell off the wall. Along with the mud, the remains of a dark, shiny animal with short legs came to the surface. Mudry thought he had found a mummified baby buffalo, so he started to look at it. He looked at its skin, fur, and a small tail. And then he saw a trunk.
Mudry called his boss, Brian McCaughan, who is the general manager and chief operating officer of Treadstone Equipment, a family-owned gold mining company. After inspecting the baby animal, which was so well-preserved that it almost looked like it had just died, McCaughan told everyone to stop working immediately. He took pictures of the find and started talking to experts about it.
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On Eureka Creek in the Yukon Klondike Placer Miner’s Association was where Nun Cho ga was found. Thirty minutes after being discovered, the paleontologist for the Yukon government, Grant Zazula, opened an email with a picture of the frozen woolly mammoth- the most complete woolly mammoth ever found in North America to date. Zazula says, “She’s beautiful, one of the most incredible mummified Ice Age animals ever discovered in the world.”
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June 21 was National Indigenous Peoples Day, which is a legal holiday in the Yukon. Zazula was in Whitehorse, about six hours from where the gold was found in Eureka Creek, just south of Dawson City.
Zazula turned to two geologists to recover the mammoth, one with the Yukon Geological Survey and another with the University of Calgary. They ran to the creek, looked around, and got the body parts in less than an hour before a storm hit. Zazula stated, “If she wasn’t recovered at that time, she would have been lost in the storm.”
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Zazula thinks that Nun cho ga is a female based on a quick examination. She thinks that Nun Cho ga was about a month old when she died more than 30,000 years ago. The geology of the area where the mammoth was found suggests that she was probably grazing in a grassy area without any trees when she wandered away from her mother and got stuck in the mud.
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Nun cho ga is still in good shape because she died quickly in a unique place. In most places on earth, the only remains of Ice Age animals are their fossilized bones. But in the Yukon, permafrost acts like a freezer, keeping important information like DNA and soft tissues like muscle, skin, and hair. Miners and researchers in the territory have found the well-preserved bones of a wolf pup, a caribou calf, giant camels, and other animals that died a long time ago. Now, Nun Cho ga will join them. She is the first whole baby woolly mammoth to be found in North America and only the second in the world.
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Even among these unusual finds, Nun Cho ga stands out. Zazula says that the elephant is “perfect” and “beautiful.” She is about 4.5 feet long from the base of her tail to the base of her trunk.
“She has a trunk. She has a tail. She has tiny little ears. She has the little prehensile end of the trunk where she could use it to grab grass,” he adds. The baby mammoth might be in better shape than Lyuba, the first well-preserved baby woolly mammoth but without a tail that was found in Siberia in 2017.
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