LET'S MAKE A MAMMOTH

摘要

In 1990 the late Michael Crichton gave the idea of reviving extinct species a slickly plausible and enormously entertaining workout in his novel Jurassic Park. At that time the longest genome that had ever been sequenced was that of a virus. The best part of 20 years on, hundreds of animal genome sequences have been published. This week, for the first time, the genome of something undoubtedly charismatic and definitively extinct joins the list: the mammoth (Matn-muthus primigenius). If you want to bring a species back to life, the mammoth would be almost as dramatic as a dinosaur. And unlike Tyrannosaurus rex, the mammoth has close living relatives to lend a hand.