Why woolly mammoths could be walking among us again in just a few years

After bringing back from extinction, are confident we could soon see the return of the long-dead

Woolly mammoths roamed Europe, Asia, and North America from approximately 300,000 years ago until around 10,000 years ago, as per National Geographic. Sadly, these once magnificent beasts were reduced to just a few scattered herds, with the last known group surviving until as recently as 1650 BC.

Covered in two shaggy layers of fur, these ancient were approximately the size of African elephants but with significantly smaller ears - another clever evolutionary feature that helped them retain body heat amid freezing temperatures.

It's unclear exactly why woolly mammoths ceased to exist altogether; however, it's believed this could have been due to a number of factors, such as human hunting, habitat loss, and climate changes. With their distinctive appearance, these herbivore giants have long been a source of fascination. Now, it's believed they could walk among us once more.

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Colossal Biosciences, which resurrected the dire wolf, has announced that $200 million worth of funding raised in January will now be used to bring back the woolly mammoth. Colossal CEO Ben Lamm, who remains "positive" that we'll see woolly mammoth calves by late 2028, issued the following statement: "Our recent successes in creating the technologies necessary for our end-to-end de-extinction toolkit have been met with enthusiasm by the investor community.

"This funding will grow our team, support new development, expand our de-extinction species list while continuing to allow us to carry forth our mission to make extinction a thing of the past."

Colossal has already taken steps to turn this once-sci-fi concept into a reality. A mammoth genome has been sequenced, and the biotechnology and genetic engineering company has already discovered a way to produce elephant stem cells which could give rise to several different cell types.

The next step will be the gene editing process, with scientists adding targeted mammoth genes into elephant DNA. Mr Lamm told "I like to think of what we're doing like reverse Jurassic Park." However, while the ill-fated staff at Jurassic Park extracted ancient DNA from amber before filling in any gaps with frog genes, the team at Colossal Biosciences will be working backwards.

Mr Lamm explained: "We're not taking mammoth DNA and plugging in the holes, we're trying to engineer the lost genes from mammoths into Asian elephants."

Fascinatingly, Asian elephants are closely related to woolly mammoths, more so than they are to their living counterparts, the African elephants. Indeed, Asian elephants share 95 per cent of their genetic code with woolly mammoths, and by studying the differences between their genomes, Colossal researchers have identified 'target genes' that can determine whether an organism will become an elephant or a mammoth.

With great strides made in the field of gene editing techniques such as CRISPR, the team can now plug these target genes straight into the DNA of elephants. This has made it possible to take the gene that makes mammoths woolly and place this in the DNA of an ordinary Asian elephant.

Mr Lamm continued: "You can think of DNA being like a twisted ladder with each little rung being a base pair. We are able to change each rung of the ladder, but now we also have the ability to engineer new pieces of the ladder that we want to be there."

According to Mr Lamm, the elephant-mammoth hybrid DNA can be used to make 'pluripotent stem cells,' which can become any sort of tissue.

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