The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week – from controversial columns to expert analysis
Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns
Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter
There is a strong chance a long-lost species could brought back from the dead before 2028, the founder of the world’s first “de-extinction” firm has said.
Scientists at Colossal Biosciences, a biotech start-up in Texas, are already well on their way to reviving the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger (also known as thylacine), using gene-editing technology.
But Ben Lamm, the company’s chief executive, said it is “highly likely” the latter two could potentially pip the ancient shaggy giant – which went extinct around 4,000 years ago – to the post within the next three years.
Mr Lamm said: “We are pursuing them all at the same rate.
“Mammoths have a 22-month gestation (the process of developing inside the womb).
“We have set a date of late 2028 for our first mammoth and we are on track for that currently, which is great.
“But given the other species have much shorter gestation, it is highly likely that we will see another species before the mammoth.”
The Tasmanian tiger – which was declared extinct in 1982 in Australia – has the shortest pregnancy with a gestation period of “just weeks”, according to Colossal Biosciences.
And the typical gestation period for the dodo – a large flightless bird that once lived on the island of of Mauritius but died off sometime in the 17th Century – is about a month long.
But Mr Lamm is reluctant to divulge which of the two has a greater chance of earlier resurrection, saying: “We are not yet commenting on which species will be the first but I do believe that it is highly likely we will have a species before 2028, and it will be one of the three that you’re looking at.”
Colossal Biosciences was formed in 2021 by tech entrepreneur Mr Lamm along with Harvard University geneticist George Church.
In simple terms, the science behind the mission involves working out the “core” genes that make an extinct animal what it is, and then replicate those genes using the DNA of a close existing relative.
The woolly mammoth’s closest relative is the Asian elephant with whom it shares 99.5% of genes, according to Mr Lamm.
He said: “Mammoths are genetically closer to Asian elephants than Asian elephants are to African elephants – that always kind of blows people’s mind.”
The dodo’s closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon, a grey bird with colourful features found in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India.
Meanwhile the Tasmanian tiger is closely related to the fat-tailed dunnart, a tiny creature that looks like a mouse but is 100 times smaller, with suggestions that an artificial womb may need to be invented for the extinct creature to develop.
The company has raised 235 million US dollars (£177m) to date, with celebrity backers including Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, American socialite Paris Hilton and motivational guru Tony Robbins.
Valued at around 1.7 billion US dollars (£1.3bn), the firm has secured an additional 50 million US dollars (£38m) to launch the Colossal Foundation.
The non-profit organisation aims to aid conservation effort, focusing on at-risk animals such as the the vaquita, a porpoise which is also one of the most endangered marine species on the planet, the northern white rhino, which is on the brink of extinction, and the pink pigeon, a rare species found in Mauritius.
Mr Lamm said: “People love to talk about the de-extinction work that we do around the mammoth, the thylacine and the dodo, but we also do a lot of conservation and species preservation work.
“All the technologies that we develop on the path to de-extinction, we make available to conservation groups.
“But now, we have raised 50 million dollars of new capital just for our foundation to help empower the scientists to go leverage those technologies in the field and develop new ones right for conservation, because there is not enough money going into conservation, and there’s definitely not enough R&D (research and development) going into conservation.”
