The highly-debated question, “Should extinct animals be brought back?”, is currently being challenged by scientists Professor George Church and his team at Harvard University. With the recent successful experiments concerning mammoth DNA and elephant embryos, Church and his team predict that woolly mammoths could be revived by 2019.

During the Ice Age, the now-extinct woolly mammoth used to wander around Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. However, in the last Ice Age that occurred about 10,000 years ago, most of them became extinct. The last remaining species lived on Wrangel Island until about 3,300 years ago. Although many believe mammoths are more closely related to African elephants, studies have shown that their closest relatives are actually Asian elephants. This was discovered based on the fact that the mammoth and Asian elephant have more genetic similarities.

Church and his team, called the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team, have been working on this project since 2015. They have been working to recreate the mammoth’s complete DNA blueprint with preserved mammoth DNA from the Arctic permafrost. The team is also planning to extract segments of mammoth DNA and insert them into the genome from an elephant embryo, creating a mammoth-elephant hybrid. The hybrid will have many characteristic traits of a mammoth, including shaggy coats, large ears, and antifreeze-like blood.

The Harvard scientists have already conducted tests that have proven to be successful where they combine mammoth and elephant DNA into the same cell. Furthermore, instead of using a surrogate elephant mother to prevent certain risks, Church and his team are planning to use an artificial womb to carry the hybrid. The scientists are also going to use cloning methods to create egg cells from elephant skin cells. Then, the eggs would artificially develop into embryos to hold the mammoth-elephant hybrid.

The number of splice sites where mammoth DNA is inserted into the elephant genome was initially only 15, but within the past two years, the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team has increased the number of sites by 30, resulting in a total of 45 splice sites. According to Church, his team is “working on ways to evaluate the impact of all [the] edits and basically trying to establish embryogenesis in the lab.” The different splice sites will affect how well the elephants can survive in cold weather, like mammoths.

Church also noted, “Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo. Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We’re not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years.”

This breakthrough has caused some controversy among scientists that believe extinct animals shouldn’t be revived. On the other hand, many believe experiments should be done to revive present-day endangered animals on the verge of becoming extinct. With modern technology evolving so quickly, reversing extinction could become a common process in the future.