Just Finished Reading: The Re-Origin of Species – A Second Chance for Extinct Animals by Torill Kornfeldt (FP: 2016) [211pp] 

There was much talk, some years ago, about bringing mammoths back. A fairly intact baby mammoth had been discovered in the Siberian permafrost and it looked like viable DNA could be extracted from it. Bringing back animals that had gone extinct has a romantic quality to it. It’s a mixture of almost godlike power as well a moral righteousness of putting something right – most especially when it was us who made the creature extinct in the first place. There’s also, naturally, the scientific challenge or challenges as well as the possible financial payoff. In the background of everything else is, rather inevitably, Jurassic Park. Whenever any recovery of any species comes up it’s only a matter of time before dinosaurs and Michael Crighton come into the conversation – as the author of this interesting book discovered for herself. 

Intrigued initially with the talk of herds of mammoths wandering the Siberian steppe she decided to find out for herself exactly where the science stood and what exactly those involved in these cutting-edge projects had in mind. She was, as I was, both intrigued and rather disappointed with the results. Although there are indeed ongoing projects to bring back mammoths, the passenger pigeon, and even dinosaurs there’s one HUGE problem hanging over all of them – getting viable DNA from creatures that became extinct hundreds, thousands and sometimes millions of years ago. Apparently, they have indeed extracted usable DNA from mammoths. Although they haven’t managed to get DNA from a single specimen, they have managed to piece together a full mammoth genome from multiple individuals. So far so good. But, and this surprised me greatly, the scientists involved had no intention of using this information to eventually ‘clone’ a mammoth. No, they intend to genetically modify an Asian elephant, bit by bit, to *resemble* a mammoth. To me, that’s not exactly ‘bring it back’. That’s creating something completely new. Likewise with the passenger pigeon, they propose to use genetic information to modify an existing pigeon to more *resemble* its extinct cousin. With the holy grail of dinosaurs, it gets worse. So far it has proven impossible to derive ANY dinosaur DNA from ANY source. It’s just far too old to have survived – yes, even in amber. So, the idea is to ‘regress’ chickens to more *resemble* their dinosaur ancestors. Any resulting ‘dinosaurs’ will be both heavily modified chickens and tiny. Maybe they’ll sell well as exclusive pets?  

Oddly the most interesting and hopeful example in this book was the American chestnut. Apparently, it has been pushed to the edge of extinction by the unintentional introduction of a foreign fungus which almost eliminated it save for a few hold-out clusters that are endangered every day. With the ‘simple’ addition of a fungus resistant gene from wheat it looks like it’s possible – at the time of publication – that the newly bolstered variety could start expanding again. At least that would be an only slightly modified original species rather than the re-created versions mentioned above. 

Full of interesting science, interesting (sometimes rather odd) scientists and a healthy dose of philosophy and moral dilemma, this was a fascinating if rather sobering read. One thing it did make clear – an actual Jurassic Park with *real* dinosaurs is a LONG way from being realised, which is a bit disappointing. But there’s much food for thought here – not only about if we can do it, but also if we should do it. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in the topic. 

Translated from the Swedish by Fiona Graham