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Most people who love the Jurassic Park movie franchise and are generally fans of dinosaurs, among other prehistoric animals, wish what was shown in the movie could be possible in real life too. While not dinosaur species like the T-Rex or so, a scientist, however, is trying to develop genetically engineered woolly mammoths, which are ancestors of modern-day elephants and thrived during the Ice Age.
He is being assisted by Ben Lamm, an entrepreneur, who is helping fund this project dubbed Colossal. Project Colossal is the brainchild of Harvard geneticist George Church. Thanks to the financial aid from Lamm, as well as others, Project Colossal now has $15 million as seed funding.
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The revival of woolly mammoths isn"t being done to set up an amusement park as is the case in the Jurassic Park movies though, at least not on paper. The aim of the project is to create lab-grown genetically engineered mammoths using Asian elephant DNA so it can help to slow down the adverse effects that the Arctic is facing due to climate change and global warming.
Church believes that the grazing behavior of the mammoths would mean these animals help to bring down the number of smaller trees in the Tundras and establish more grasslands there. Grass apparently is more reflective of the sunlight than the existing coniferous tree trunks. Also, the weight of the mammoths could really tamp down the ice cover too which could reduce the amount of heat insulation it provides, hence lowering global warming in the long run.
The first such mammoth calf could be born in just six years according to Church.
Source and image: CNBC