What extinct animal are scientists trying to bring back

There are more extinct species than there are currently living on Earth, which makes our curiosity shoot through the roof. It’s no wonder we can’t get enough of those Jurassic Park movies. Luckily, we live in a time where science can turn back the clock, and similarly to the aforementioned movie franchise, de-extinct some of the world’s lost species. There are even lists of potential candidates available and they’re nothing short of fascinating.

We at Bright Side checked out which species might soon be walking among us again and selected the following 10 that could be very exciting to see in real life.

1. Woolly mammoth

Size: Shoulder height for males reached about 8.9 feet and 11.2 feet with a weight of up to 6 tons.

Originated in: East Asia

Went extinct: 4,000 years ago

Closest living relative: African elephants

2. Quagga

Size: around8’5″ long and 4’5″ tall

Originated in: South Africa

Went extinct: thelate nineteenth century

Closest living relative: zebras

3. Elephant bird

Size: stood at 9.8 feet tall and weighed 1,600 lb

Originated in: Madagascar

Went extinct: around 1000 CE to 1200 CE

Closest living relative: kiwi birds

4. Baiji (Chinese river dolphin)

Pictured: Qiqi, last living Baiji, died in 2002

Size: Males were about7.5 feet long while females could grow to be 8’2″.

Originated in: China

Went extinct: 2002

Closest living relative: theChinese white dolphin

5. Glyptodont

Size: 12 feet long and 1.5 feet high

Originated in: North and South America

Went extinct: 8,000 to 7,000 years ago

Closest living relative: armadillos

6. Pyrenean ibex

Size: 5 feet long and 30 inches tall at the shoulder

Originated in: Southwestern Europe

Went extinct: The last living Pyrenean ibex was born in 2003 but died 7 minutes later due to a lung defect.

Closest living relative: theibex, also known as a wild mountain goat

7. Dodo

Size: around 3.3 feet tall

Originated in: Mauritius

Went extinct: in the seventeenth century

Closest living relative: theNicobar pigeon

8. Tasmanian tiger

Size: 39 inches to 51 inches long and 24 inches high

Originated in: New Guinea and Australia

Went extinct: in the twentieth century

Closest living relative: the Tasmanian devil and the numbat

9. Ground sloth

Size: Nearly 20 feet long and weighed up to 6,600 lb

Originated in: South America

Went extinct: around 11,000 years ago

Closest living relative: Sloths

10. Saber-toothed tiger

Size: The largest species weighed between 485 lb to 961 lb and stood at 39 inches.

Originated in: North and South America

Went extinct: 10,000 years ago

Closest living relative: tigers

Which of these animals would you want to see in the wild? Where do you stand on the de-extinction of species in general?

Bright Side/Animals/10 Extinct Animals That Scientists Want to Bring Back to Life

More than 10,000 years have passed since woolly mammoths roamed the planet, and a group of scientists wants to use gene editing technology to resurrect the long-lost creatures. A start-up named Colossal announced yesterday that they have secured funding that could bring thousands of woolly mammoths back to Siberia.

“This is a major milestone for us,” says George Church, a geneticist at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to Carl Zimmer for the New York Times. “It’s going to make all the difference in the world.”

Previous discussions on resurrecting long-extinct animals like the woolly mammoth have been largely theoretical, but Colossal has taken many of the first steps toward resurrecting the creature using a gene-editing technology called CRISPR. Because woolly mammoths and Asian elephants shared a common ancestor some 6 million years ago, Church was optimistic that he could rewrite the elephants’ DNA to produce something that looks and behaves like a mammoth using CRISPR, which acts as a copy-and-paste tool for genetic code.

“Our goal is to make a cold-resistant elephant, but it is going to look and behave like a mammoth,” Church says to the Guardian’s Ian Sample. “Not because we are trying to trick anybody, but because we want something that is functionally equivalent to the mammoth, that will enjoy its time at -40 Celsius.”

They compared genomes from surviving fragments of woolly mammoth DNA to those of modern elephants and pinpointed the biggest differences. By tweaking certain genes to produce denser hair or a thicker layer of fat, the team hopes to create an animal with mammoth-like characteristics. Church and his colleagues plan to create an artificial mammoth uterus lined with stem-cell-derived tissue to grow the mammoth fetus. They are optimistic that they will produce an elephant-mammoth hybrid within the next few years and hope to have a complete woolly mammoth within the decade.

The team at Colossal says the project is about more than a scientific stunt—the return of mammoths could benefit the arctic landscape by reducing moss and increasing grassland, according to the New York Times. Critics say there is little evidence that mammoths would help, and instead recommend more effective ways to restore the environment than resurrecting long-extinct creatures.

"There's absolutely nothing that says that putting mammoths out there will have any, any effect on climate change whatsoever," says Love Dalén, a paleogeneticist at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden, to Katie Hunt for CNN.

Even if Colossal can pull off the feat, the Jurassic-Park-style revival has some scientists stopping to ask whether or not they should do it at all. There are numerous ethical quandaries around resurrecting extinct animals, especially when scientists don’t know very much about their biology and behavior.

The team still has major hurdles to pass before any baby mammoths are running around the Siberian tundra, including building an artificial uterus that can host a 200-pound fetus for its nearly two-year-long gestation period.

What would be the best extinct animal to bring back?

Are humans trying to bring back extinct animals?