Extinct animals which are currently unknown to science could be brought back to life through ancient DNA, researchers believe.
At Colossal Biosciences in Texas, scientists are already well on their way to reviving mammoths, Tasmanian tigers (thylacine) and the dodo, and hope to see the extinct animals roaming wild again within the next decade.
But the team is now delving far deeper into the past, hunting for ancient DNA which could lead to the discovery of entirely new species never found in the fossil record.
It could also provide vital clues about how animals survived in climates far warmer than today.
In recent years, experts have found fragments of DNA that date back two million years in Greenland, and it is possible that samples could be preserved from even further back in time.
Uncovering long-lost genes or new biological functions which helped animals thrive in warmer environments could hint at genetic tweaks, drugs or vaccines that could make species more resilient today.
The Greenland samples date from a period when the climate was 15 to 17C hotter and so contain species which had evolved to cope with the warmer temperatures.
Asked if unknown species could be brought back, Professor Beth Shapiro, Chief Science Officer at Colossal, said: “Absolutely we could do that.
“The past by its very nature is different from anything that exists today and so it is ripe for discoveries. We’re like explorers, but instead of going to distant places on the planet, we’re going to the distant past, and we don’t really know what we’re going to find.
“My own academic research lab has discovered a new species of Arctic equid that lived in North America some 700,000 years ago.
“It’s not a horse, it’s not a donkey, but it’s something related to those lineages. We will discover things that the fossil record doesn’t know about and hopefully we can use that information to resurrect traits in living species that perhaps can help them to adapt to wherever our future is going.”
She added: “We’re headed toward a future that is kind of unprecedented in the human experience, but it’s not unprecedented in the evolutionary experience.”
Colossal, the world’s first de-extinction company, is making nearly £6 million ($7.5 million) available for research that delves into ancient DNA and is seeking to bring scientists together in a new technology hub which will help speed up discoveries.
The company is already working with researchers across the world studying DNA of extinct species such as blue bucks, long-horned bison, Columbian mammoths, dire wolves, giant sloths, great auks, megaloceros (also known as the Irish elk), cave hyenas, moas, sabre-toothed cats, woolly rhinoceroses, mastodons, tooth-billed pigeons, American cheetahs, giant short-faced bears, and Steller’s sea cows.
Colossal was founded in 2021 by Harvard geneticist George Church and entrepreneur Ben Lamm.
Prof Church has been attempting to bring back the mammoth for more than a decade and has suggested that artificial wombs could be used for the animals so that the experimental species would not need to be carried by an elephant.
However Mr Lamm said he was expecting the first “generation one” calves to be born by the end of 2028, through a surrogate mother with gestation expected to take 22 months, meaning the embryos will need to be implanted within the next two years.
Gaps in mammoth DNA will be filled in with the genetic material from modern Asian elephants, and the team is working with conservationists to find a suitable location for their re-wilding.
“Things are going pretty well,” he said: “We’ve put a date of 2028 for our first ‘gen-one’ mammoth calves. We’ve made significant progress: we’re now in the genetic editing phase and we’ve done extensive computational analysis with over 60 mammoth genomes.
“We don’t think that any of our gen-one or gen-two species will be born through artificial wombs, although we do have a 17-person team working on artificial wombs – we’ve made significant progress.
“But all of the ‘gen-one’ species will be done through surrogates and so we’ll be working with the Asian elephants as a surrogate model for the mammoths.”
Asked what success would look like, Lamm added: “In the next 10 years, I think what would be incredible is if we have these three species, the mammoth, the thylacine and the dodo, thriving back in their environments, as well as the tools we’ve developed being applied to save critically endangered species in the wild.
“We want to ensure that we’re bringing back the species that we set out to achieve and successfully create rebuildable populations with enough population genetics and diversity where they can thrive back in the wild.”
The team is hoping to create a “de-extinction toolkit” which will provide a blueprint for bringing back lost species and saving threatened ones.
Dr Shapiro added: “The challenge today is that habitats are changing at a rate that outpaces evolution.
“Being able to reach far back into the past to a period of time where the climate was warmer than it is today can give us some better idea of how communities are organised or how different species have adapted to be able to thrive in different climates.
“It’s not to say that that species are necessarily going to stop going extinct altogether. But I certainly think that we should have a growing set of resources that we can use to stop species from becoming extinct, that are doing so because of things that we are doing, that people are doing to landscapes.”
