Woolly mammoths could be coming to a park near you sometime before 2027, thanks to funding from PayPal founder and tech luminary Peter Thiel.
That’s according to a new book by Ben Mezrich called “Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive one of History’s Most Iconic Extinct Creatures.”
As the MIT Tech Review reported, Thiel made a quiet donation of $100,000 to a de-extinction organization called ” target=”_blank”Revive & Restore” in 2015.
The project to revive woolly mammoths has been going on for several years, but it gained new attention in February when a team of Harvard scientists said they intend to resurrect the furry creature within a decade.
The woolly mammoth went extinct 10,000 years ago, and in reality, the scientists wouldn’t actually be bringing it back. Instead, they aim to create a hybrid animal using genetic material from an elephant and a woolly mammoth. To do that, they’d carefully combine a selection of DNA from both creatures using gene-editing technology Crispr, put the cells into an artificial embryo, and accio! Woolly elephant. Elephammoth. Mammophant.
Regardless of its name, the resulting animal would essentially be an elephant with mammoth features like long, shaggy hair, subcutaneous fat, and blood uniquely adapted for frigid temperatures.
Source: Pulse