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Which of these animals was the last to go extinct? Saber-tooth tiger; Wooly mammoth, Megalodon or Eurasian cave lion.
Scientists believe certain wooly mammoths survived until 4,000 years ago, long after these other animals were thought to have gone extinct.
Can scientists use genetic engineering to bring back the wooly mammoth, and should they? This sounds like something out of "Jurassic Park", but scientists can't directly clone a wooly mammoth. The DNA they've gotten from these animal's remains has deteriorated too much, what they are hoping to do is use genetic engineering to create a hybrid of an elephant and a mammoth that would look just like the extinct animal. A biosciences and genetics company has raised $15 million to do this, and it says it hopes to have calves walking around in four to six years, but there are still a lot of questions about how this would happen.
For one thing, researchers say they'll have to make 50 changes to an elephant's genetic code so it's able to survive in the Arctic. And even then, critics say this won't create a mammoth, just a hairier, fatter elephant. They're also concerned that the possibility of using elephant mothers to carry a genetically engineered baby could be unethical. Supporters hope the project will create a lot of new interest in genetic science. It's just not known whether it will work or what the consequences would be.
