Biotechnology could revive extinct animals

 

Could animals that have been extinct since well before the existence of humans be brought back to life through technology?

UNCONFIRMED: The technology is still too new — and controversial — to determine its long-term viability

Saber-toothed tigers, wooly mammoths and other creatures we've only read about in textbooks might have a new lease on life if scientists are successful in mastering new technology that would revive a number of extinct species.
Conservation biologist Stanley Temple told MSN News that cloning techniques could bring back animals that went extinct because of environmental shifts, many of which were caused by humans.
"It's sort of making reparations for our past harms to life on the planet," he said. "Some of those species that went extinct played important ecological roles. Having them absent from ecosystem … there are consequences for other species."
NBC News and LiveScience reported on biotechnological advances that allow for the harvesting of preserved, living DNA to bring back animals like the wooly mammoth, which existed tens of thousands of years ago.
The only recorded instance of a "de-extinction" survivor is the Pyrenean ibex, which only lived for several minutes. But the ibex has only been extinct since the beginning of this century; because scientists keep well-preserved DNA of recently extinct animals, it's likelier to create a clone of them than ancient animals, Temple said.
"The chance of [ancient] de-extinction happening using the genetic engineering approaches we have now, I would guess, is decades away," he said.
Conservation ecologist Stuart Pimm, who wrote a National Geographic opinion piece against de-extinction, told MSN News the process comes with an "amazing moral hazard" that would further incline humans to corrupt the environment.  
"If you can bring species back, it says we can destroy the environment and just put it back together again," he said. "If you say you can keep a monkey's DNA and always bring them back, it begs the question, 'What are you doing for the people whose life you have destroyed by destroying where they live too?'"