13 July 2006
Mammoths in the news again
Yay! For once, useful research. What's the news? They have analysed some gene to find out that there were probably some dark mammoths (brown or black) and some lighter mammoths ("possibly blond or ginger"). Hehe.
BBC turns out to be a very good source of mammoth news. Some highlights:
Last december, they announced the decoding of mammoth mitochondrial DNA. Some nuclear DNA has also been decoded.
Last september: There is more and more mammoth ivory on the market, and some illegal "new" ivory might be passed off as mammoth. Indeed, I came accross some mammoth cribbage pegs. I needed some pegs after buying a nice board in a thrift store, but mammoth is too expensive.
In 2003: Japanese and Russian scientists want to clone mammoths from 200000 year old frozen tissue found in northern Yakutsk (see Risk board for geographical information). Ah isn't that the ultimate dream... and it's not new. I've heard similar stories from France and Japanese teams in the nineties. One team wanted to use frozen mammoth sperm to create hybrid mammoth-elephants, and possibly "refine" the mammoth over several generations. Good luck finding sperm in good enough condition, fertilizing an egg with it (it is dead you know) and being lucky enough for the "result" to live and be fertile! Definitely not the method I would bet on.
Maybe one day your family will come back Snuffy...
