There were rumors about bringing back the T-Rex. Not sure if that if possible or not. It would be cool if walking outside of your house one morning for work, and a T-Rex just runs by your front lawn. Science has yet for that to happen.
I wonder if they would be successful in bringing back the Woolly Mammoth, if they would bring back the Woolly Rhino? Just wondering.
Theoretically you could bring back the woolly rhino the same way they want to bring back the mammoth – taking the genes that make it cold adapted and splicing them with the genes from a living rhino. I know some genetic material has been recovered from woolly rhinos preserved in the permafrost but I don’t know if that includes the necessary genetic material that will allow it to survive the winters on the Russian steppes. The problem is, the Sumatran rhino is the closest living relative to the woolly rhino and they are nearly extinct themselves. Our efforts might be better served in trying to preserve the existing rhino species instead of trying to bring long extinct species back. Maybe that’s true for the Asian elephant as well since it is also facing extinction.
Also keep in mind this process doesn’t actually bring the original species back. It just alters an existing species to somewhat look like the extinct species.
As far as T. rex goes, that will never happen. First, genetic material degrades quickly. The youngest T. rex fossil is 66 million years old. Any DNA present would be too degraded to be of use. Secondly, what living animal could serve as a surrogate for the T. rex DNA? The mammoth idea described above only works because there is a living elephant that is very closely related to the mammoth. There is nothing closely related to a T. rex alive today. Yes, technically birds are dinosaurs but they still aren’t closely related enough…
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