Question: Do you think you would be able to reproduce animals from the past such as mammoths dinosuars and others by extracting and reproducing their dna or is it just a thing from the movie Jurrassic Park

  1. Excellent question – where do science and science fiction meet?
    As soon as an animal dies its genetic material starts deteriorate. Deterioration increases over time and can be quite rapid, except under extraordinary circumstances (e.g. remains frozen under extremely cold conditions). The greater the deterioration the less the chances of reproducing extinct animals. Additionally scientists are often only dealing with fragments of genetic material rather than the whole genome. So a little like trying to put a huge jigsaw puzzle together without all the pieces and no picture as a guide.
    As I understand any material over 100,000 years old would be to degraded and with current technology it would be impossible to reproduce. So reproducing dinosaurs, as you saw in Jurassic Park would not be possible.
    With recent remains e.g. Tasmanian Tiger it maybe theoretically possible, but here science meets moral and ethical questions – just because it can be done, should it be done? So it is an area that continues to have questions over it and to my understanding the work has not been done or at least not published. Between the recent and 100,000 years is a “grey” area, but more difficult as the quality or the source material deteriorates – so for the mammoths possibly depending on the preservation?

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