It has been more than 10,000 years since the last fur-covered woolly mammoth feet lumbered across the Arctic tundra.
Once a keystone species of these frozen ecosystems, the legacy of mammoths now has to be painstakingly recovered from layers of ice and permafrost by anorak-clad scientists. But not for much longer.
On September 13, entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church announced the creation of Colossal, a new gene-editing company bent on “de-extincting” the woolly using CRISPR. The company claims that rewilding of this species in the Arctic tundra could revitalize the region’s grasslands as a major source of carbon sequestration, which offers a crucial tool in the fight against climate change.
With starting capital of $15 million and four-to-six years of research, Lamm tells Inverse the company could produce a “herd” of woolly mammoths calves for the first time since the Ice Age. This means the first baby mammoths could roam the tundra by 2027 or earlier.
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But other scientists aren’t so convinced, including Tori Herridge, an evolutionary biologist working as a fellow at the Natural History Museum in London and science communicator. Before the company’s announcement, Herridge was approached to join Colossal’s advisory board but declined.
Read more: Inverse
