National Park After Dark - Resurrection: Pleistocene Park

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Jurassic Park. The Lazrus Effect. Frankenstein. All of these stories emulate our fascination with turning back the clock, to revive those which we have lost. In a time where technological advances have matched our curiosity with the past. No longer is the question if we can bring back species from the dead – but rather, should we?For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Factor: Use our link and code NPAD60 to get 60% off your first box.BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month of online therapy by using our link.Apostrophe: Get your first visit for only five dollars at our link and when you use code NPAD.Aspiration - Make your dollars make a difference. Use our link and open an Aspiration account today. For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes. Listen to Monday.com. Feel the sensation of an AI work platform. So flexible and intuitive, it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally, breathe. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night And you've had enough of shopping from your couch Done hoping it looks anything like the picture When you tear open that envelope It's time for a little in-person spring treat It's time for a trip to Ross

Work your magic Try to imagine a life without timekeeping You probably can't You know the month, the year, the day of the week There's a clock on your wall Or the dashboard of your car You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie.

Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures, a fear of time running out.

I've always adored that excerpt by Mitch Alboon. in his novel The Timekeeper. Humans have always been obsessed with time. It's a fundamental element of human awareness, and it shows. Our fixation on the passage of time not only shows in our day-to-day lives, but in our choices of entertainment as well. The time travel plot element has made appearances in writings

for hundreds of years, and it shows no signs of stopping. The theme has captured our fascination, made abundantly clear by films such as Back to the Future, the Time Traveler's wife, The Terminator, interstellar and midnight in Paris. Harnessing the power of manipulating time is alluring to us. The possibility of going back to write a wrong, change the course of history, revisit a happy

memory, or to simply step foot in a time before your own is tantalizing. Of course, on the flip side of this excitement is fear. The butterfly effect. A phrase made popular by the movie of the same name is a concern of a small change in the past leading to a large scale, unpredictable change in the future. Time runs out for all of us here on Earth. For millennia, every living thing has watched the last grain of sand in their hourglass run out. The sun has risen and set for every living organism that has ever walked our planet.

But what if that was not the case? What if we could manipulate time differently? What if we could bring back elements of the past to our present? carefully curated elements of a time before plucked from the permafrost thawed and placed into the world as we know it now. They say extinction is forever, but how long will that hold true? Welcome to National Park After Dark. Oh yes, I know exactly where this episode is going and I'm very excited. Me too.

Daniel has been talking about this episode for, I want to say, weeks. now. It's been, maybe even longer. It's been a long time for sure. Well, I think actually, you say weeks. I feel like last year at this time, I talked about like part of this episode that I had an idea for. And I don't want to say it right now because we'll get into it.

But I think it'll ring a bell. And then I just kind of put it on the back burner because I'm like, I don't know if I can really do this. But now that we're doing freebie things once a year, I think this is. is mine. I'm cashing it in. This is your freebie. Is there a national park involved at all? Yeah, like for one minute. Love it. So I don't know. We'll let the people decide, but there are parks involved, kind of, but the main theme is not national parks centered. But it is a topic that I am extremely interested in, have always been, and it shows my notes are very, very long.

So I hope everyone has something that they're like really enthralled in, like deep clean your house. or something. We're going to be here for a while. We're going to settle in. Because Danielle is talking about bringing up, bringing back species from the dead. Boop boop boop.

Bal, lasers, fireworks. Yeah, it's going to be good. But before I start, obviously, because once I start, there's no stop in this train. We do have one thing to announce and it's actually kind of really cool.

We're doing a Spotify live Trail Tales episode. Coming up soon, we're going to be reading our trail tales live on Spotify on October 25th at 4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, which is 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. And it's all for spooky season. We're going to be reading your spooky ghostly trail tales. So if you have any that you would like to hear live, you can send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. And we might read them on there. Yeah. And we're also doing something cool at the end. So we'll share our trail tales like we usually do. But then at the end, we're going to do a live kind of like Q&A session.

And this is really cool because not only is it live, but if you download the Spotify, so obviously this is just on Spotify, clearly. You don't need a subscription either. You can just download Spotify if you don't already have it and listen from there. Yep. And you can listen from there. You don't have to pay for anything. It's all free.

Yep. And then, but if you want to participate, like have the chance to participate in the live Q&A, like have your voice up with us, talk with us live. There is another app. It's called the Spotify Live app. Same thing. It's free. You just create a profile on there and you can interact with us that way.

Yeah, you get to call us. We get to chat with you in real life, real time. And you can ask us getting questions. We'll answer whatever for you. If you have a quick little spooky tale you want to tell us or you have some park recommendations, whatever you want to do, we are excited to talk to you guys. So please download the Spotify Live app because I feel like this is like, remember when you're a kid and you try and call in to the radio shows and you get to talk on air?

Oh my God. And it's just so fun. Maddie in the morning, Kiss 101, 8. Like that was my, or jam in 94.5. I feel like you were a jammin 94-5 person. I was a jamming 94-5 person for sure. This is only Boston people will understand this, obviously. But I would call in all the time and no one would ever answer me and we'll answer you guys.

So download Spotify Live, October 25th, 4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. We're going to get a little spooky and get ready for Halloween. And it is audio only, just so everyone knows. Yeah. Your faces won't be on Spotify or anything. It's just audio. Yeah, no, don't worry about that. And if you notice on the Spotify app right now, there's like a little banner at the top that'll have, like you can set a reminder and all that. It's right there on our page on the app. So yeah, that's that. That's the only thing I really have to say before, talk about some biology and resurrection if you're into that. Well, I want to talk about some resurrections of extinct species, so let's get into it. Okay. So we're only about halfway through

spooky season. And I feel like I've been saying this way more often than not, but I am definitely stretching this as far as like national park related. And to be honest, like spooky content, it's definitely not a haunting. It's not a scary story. It's not a cryptid. And I have a also said this before, but I really think this is like one of my favorite episodes I've researched. I keep just like raising the bar for that. But this topic is definitely going to be more of like elicit some debate and conversation more than like a true just this is what happened and it's the story. It is what it is. And I love that. I always gravitate towards. I was going to say this isn't the first episode that you've done that sparks the debate or questions or commentary conversations. So I'm ready.

let's learn about this. Perfect. And the other thing that I absolutely adore about this topic is it's very reminiscent of one of my favorite movie franchises of all time. The Titanic. How is resurrecting dead species have to do? What does that have to do with Titanic? I don't know. And it's not a movie franchise either.

Okay, just think about it. What movie franchise is like huge brings back extinct species? Jurassic Park. Yes, there we go, Jurassic Park. Oh my God, I got one right. You have never asked me a question on this podcast that I have gotten correct. Well, you did it. So, of course, Jurassic Park is a fictional story,

but the concept actually isn't as far fetched as you may think. So today we're going to discuss some very real places, parks, and very real companies that plan on doing what John Hammond did for his notorious park. We are going to be talking about de-extinction, bringing back species from the dead. So I feel like... Dinosaurs. Well, no, not dinosaurs. And we'll talk about why.

But I feel like I'm just like, should I become a teacher? Because last time it was like an English class. And today, it's... I feel like I'm leading a science seminar. Maybe. Maybe it's your calling and you're learning about it now. I feel like Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, the science guy. Anyway.

I feel like you would be a good teacher. I don't, but I'll do my best. Here we go. So to begin, it would be helpful to obviously define de-extinction. Also referred to as resurrection biology at its most basic level, it is the process of bringing back or resurrecting species that have gone extinct. Of course, the logistics and techniques that go into this process are very complicated and we'll kind of touch on the how a little bit later on. but just to start, I want to ask you, when you think of an extinct species, which ones for you come to mind?

Um, mammoths. Okay. Those, I can't think of the name of them right now, but, uh, those really huge bears that used to exist. Oh, the short-faced bears. Yes. The short-faced bears, dinosaurs. I guess those are like the biggest ones that I think of off the top of my head.

I definitely think of the woolly mammoth as well. The other two that came to mind for me, right? away other than obviously the umbrella term dinosaur, which clearly encompasses many different types of species. But the dodo bird and passenger pigeon came to mind right away for me. Okay. And I think when someone mentions the word extinction, it very obviously elicits different feelings, some of them, including sadness and an urgency.

This urgency to do something because usually we hear extinction thrown around in the context of if we don't do something for this X, you know, fill in the blank species within this amount of time, we're going to lose them forever. And while this is valid and we should absolutely care about and take measures to prevent against extinctions, I do want to share some figures and give some context when it comes to extinction on the planet because it's been a natural part of the planet's evolutionary history. Clearly, we don't know all of the species that have ever existed on the planet over time. So it's probable and extremely likely that some have gone extinct without us even knowing they were here at all.

However, a staggering 99% of the 4 billion species to have ever evolved on Earth that we are aware of are gone. That's a very high percent. It's almost 100. Yeah. If you have ever heard the term, we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event. This obviously implies that there were five previous ones. ones spanning, I'm not, I'm going to, you know, spare you and not get into each of them, but spanning from 444 million years ago to about 66 million years ago, these events spanned millions of years

each and each have staggering statistics associated with them. So depending on the cause, whether it was an asteroid, global warming, major changes in the Earth's carbon cycle, each mass extinction event, within them, 75 to 90 percent. of all species on the planet at the time that these extinction events were occurring were wiped out each time. And this happened five times. With each mass die-off, the planet shifted, changed, and made way for new forms of life to emerge. The most studied of which was the transition between extinction events of 66 million years ago, which saw the end of non-avian dinosaurs and made way for mammals and birds to evolve. And that's, you know, it made way for the species we see now. That was the most recent past mass extension die off. Cassie's eyes are like glazing over. She's like, uh-huh. Sixty-six million years ago. No, I'm thinking I'm like 66 million years ago, the most recent. Okay. Yes. Very recently. It also depends a little bit on who you ask because some experts believe we are in the midst of one right now, that sixth mass extinction event, which is dubbed the Holocene

extinction. And unlike previous events, this one is driven primarily through human activity. So although it's not all-encompassing or it's not limited to just these factors, but there's obvious unsustainable use of water and land, energy use, as well as contribution to climate change, a dash of other things, including some serious threats of invasive species and spread of diseases via human trade, like things that we have had a hand in, direct hand in. But this mass extinction didn't start with the advent of the first car or the first shopping mall. I think a lot of people when you say, well, humans are contributing to it. We think of a very present tense human activity. But this mass extinction didn't start, you know, 50 years ago, but rather at the end of the last ice age, so about 10,000

years ago. So human activity, we were still around. We were just doing different things. But that's still contributed to shifts in the climate. Currently, rates of extinction are hundreds of times faster than ever before. While we worry about poster children, such as the polar bear and the rhino, other species have slipped silently into extinction right under our noses. According to the IUCN, between the years of 2010 and 2019, 160 species have been declared extinct, including species like the long-eared mouse, Bermuda Hawk, Caterina Pupfish, and the Yangtzee River dolphin have all vanished from the wild without much fanfare. As of today, according to that same organization, more than 41,000 species, which is about a total of 28% of all of our assessed

species, are threatened with extinction. It's a large number, 41%. No, so 41,000 species, and that equates to 28%. Oh, okay. That's still a lot. 28% is still a lot. It's still a big, big figure, but there are some species that have vanished from Earth that have captured the hearts of humans. There are some animals that we can't help but wonder, what if they still existed? For the most part, that's a passing thought, an interesting parallel universe to contemplate. Imagine pitching a tent in a forest where saber-toothed tigers still prowl, or surfing waves that conceal megalodons. While sharing space with some of the world's most formidable predators isn't at the top of most people's lists, walking amongst some smaller, less man-eating inclined animals isn't just a fantasy.

it's about to become a reality. We are going to discuss two species in particular who, in recent years, have garnered global attention for this exact reason. In August of 2022, Jesse Mild was trekking through Belair National Park with her son and her sister. Established in 1891,

the first national park in South Australia and the 10th in the world, the 835 hectare, about 2,000-acre park, is popular for hiking and biking, and the family, was enjoying the sunshine when they spotted something a little strange. At first, Jesse thought that the creature crossing the road and into a nearby clearing was a weird-looking kangaroo, or maybe

just a very scraggly-looking dog, but its gate was off. Footage of the animal taken by Jesse was posted to a local Facebook page, and comments just came rushing in. A flurry of discussion ensued, and similar reported sightings of strange animals within the park started piling up. It seemed that there was a consensus. It was strange all right because there hadn't been a confirmed sighting of what Jesse and her family had claimed to see that day in the park since 1933. The thylacine, aka the Tasmanian tiger, had supposedly died off long ago. Do you know what species I'm talking about? A Tasmanian tiger? Mm-hmm. Like, can you picture it in your mind right now? I can picture it on Google. Oh, lovely. Okay. Well, I'm going to describe it to you, but a visual would be

helpful. Oh, wow. I've actually, I've seen a photo of, yeah, explain it because I'm looking at a photo now that I'm looking at it. I've definitely seen this before. Okay. So not to be confused with the Tasmanian devil, which is a different marsupial. The thylacine was a nocturnal or semi-nocturnal carnivorous marsupial with a striped dog-like appearance that was once found on mainland Australia, Tasmania, and Papua New Guinea in dry eucalyptic forest, wetland and grassland habitats. They had a sandy, yellowish-brown coat, stood just shy of 0.6 meters, which is about two feet at the shoulder, and measured roughly 1.8 meters, about 6 feet from nose to tail, and they weighed an average of about 60 pounds or around 27 kicks. Despite their nickname, they were known to have a quiet and somewhat nervous temperament.

It's thought that predation by and competition from the dingo may have contributed to their disappearance from the mainland of Australia and in Papua New Guinea, but on the island of Tasmania, it's thought that conflict between settlers and the introduction of livestock led to their demise there. According to the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service, by the early 1900s, the animal was considered a rare sighting as government-led bounties, excessive hunting, habitat destruction, and introduced disease led to the decimation of the species. In 1933, the last confirmed sighting of the animal was documented in the wild. in 1936, Benjamin, the last known thylacine in captivity, died in the Hobart Zoo, just two months after the species was granted a protected status. And then finally, the species was officially declared extinct in 1986. There's a big gap right there between the 30s and the 50s.

The 80s. The 80s. Sorry, I was doing math in my head. I'm like 50 years. And then I said the 50s. Right, well, because they're, you know, the last documented siting was in the 30s. And we'll get into it a little bit of as far as like they just, you can't just be like, oh, yep, well, the last one was seen in the 30s and two years later we haven't seen any. So guess they're gone. Like there's a process of determining. Yeah, I can imagine. Right.

And a lot of the footage and pictures that you see, if you Google Thylacine, are black and white or restored color photos of Tasmania tigers in captivity. And the one that is most prominently showed is Benjamin. And there's a short clip on YouTube of him. It's probably about like a minute long. It was originally released by, I believe, the Smithsonian. And it's just footage of the last living, known living thylacine. And it's just eerie to watch, you know, the last of something.

I just have to say looking at these photos, too, if everyone's Googling this like I am right now. Them with their mouths open. They look like a crocodile. It's like they look like they're a python and can like unhinge their jaw a little bit. Yeah. It's really cool. It's really, really cool. But they're shy or we're shy and elusive.

They look like they're yelling. I know. It looks like they're screaming. It's so funny. Like I would really, have we had this discussion like if you could have any, or maybe this was on tooth and claw. Like if you could have any animal and it wasn't a problem. Like there was no backlash. It was totally acceptable.

No one would get hurt. It was okay. It's okay for the environment. It wasn't going to murder you. Like, it was okay all around. Yeah. What animal would it be? And I'm pretty sure mine would be a thylacine because it's so cool looking. And they're already small. Like they're the size of like blue. Like having a little dog in your house. A little striped dog that can unhinge its jaw like a snake. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want.

steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. All right, so the species is officially declared extinct in 1986, but despite this classifications, citing similar to Jesse's have trickled in almost every single year. And just to throw some examples in there.

In 2019, someone exploring Sleeping Beauty Mountain in Tasmania reported seeing a thylacine footprint. That same year, a government plant biologist claims to have seen one from about 100 feet away while they were out in a remote area conducting a plant study. And in 2018, a group of cyclists say they witnessed one of the animals bound across the road in front of all of them. In 1982, a park ranger was sleeping in his vehicle when he woke up to find one standing in front of him. The park ranger stated he watched it for several minutes and was absolutely sure of its identity. There have been so many alleged sightings that the Tasmanian thylacine sightings records database was created. The database serves many purposes, but one of them is actually to collect data to estimate when the animal actually went extinct, because this is a big question mark.

And they suggest it was actually much more recent than initially thought, placing it somewhere in the early 2000s. So a couple decades after it was officially declared extinct. And while they do receive citing reports and state, quote, the aggregate data and modeling suggests that there is some chance of ongoing persistence in remote wilderness of the island, it's improbable. If they did persist, it would be in extremely small populations in remote areas such as the Franklin Gordon, Wild Rivers National Park. Improbable or not, teams of people such as the Thylacine Research Unit, a group of scientists, naturalists, and specialists who research and engage in field investigations and various experiments designed to determine the continued existence at the Thylacine, and who have appeared on the Travel Channel, Animal Planet, and in several different journals

and newspaper articles, they all continue to devote time and resources into the search for the persistence of the species. Well, for something that they have deemed probable as being extinct, there's a lot of resources into it trying to prove that wrong. Exactly. There is. And I have seen, it was many years ago, but I have seen these shows on, I think it was like, forget the series, but it was definitely on Animal Planet. There's been a couple like short little documentaries on the travel channel and things like that, but it's all about traffic. backing down these elusive species that it's different than cryptozoology because we know they existed. And there's a slim possibility that they maybe still do, but it's improbable. And it's

just the whole, I hate to say fantasy, but it's exciting. Like, do, are they still there? It is exciting. Yeah. It kind of reminds me up in the Northeast, there's this big debate of whether mountain lions are still up here. And I believe they were deemed extinct up here in this region. Yes, the eastern cougar. Yes. Yeah. But every year, there's multiple sightings of them. So when you're getting all these sightings, like how you're saying here, it's just, even with that, it's probable, I feel like in a scenario where you spoke to locals, people would probably be like, yeah, they exist for sure.

Just like here, if you talk to anyone in New Hampshire, especially, I feel like Maine, everyone's going to be like, yeah, I'm out in line. around here, even though if you look it up, it's like, no, they're extinct, they're not in the area, but there's just so many local sightings that... It's hard. Yeah, it's hard to gauge. But not everyone is banking on the possibility of a few small holdouts in the Tasmanian bush. The fascination with the animal is deeply ingrained in Australia, in particular. In 2005, hikers trekking through the remote area of Wollamai National Park discovered different

charcoal rock art dating back over 1,600 years made by the indigenous peoples of the area depicting the thylacine. Humans draw and document that which is important to us. What we love and what we fear, what fascinates us. And thousands of years later, a lot has changed, but not that sentiment. And there is one company that is bringing that fascination to a whole other level. The first Jurassic Park movie made de-extinction seem pretty straightforward and simple. Yeah, there was a lot of people with lab coats on and they were pipetting the colorful substances into in and out of test tubes and walking around, like in freezers and all of that. But if you remember this, and I'm talking about the first, first Jurassic part, there's a scene

when Dr. Grant, Dr. Sadler, and Dr. Malcolm were getting a tour of the facility and they were kind of put into this little movie theater and shown a film. And the, little guy, the character, was a DNA helix and he was a cartoon and he was walking them through the process of how the park's dinosaurs were created. I do remember that. And essentially the film, you know, has this little DNA guy explaining this process that essentially DNA was extracted from a mosquito that had bit a dinosaur, however many millions of years ago, 66 million years or 65 million years ago.

And it was preserved in amber. thus preserving the DNA. It was extracted. They did some things with pipettes and dinosaur eggs were created. And then bam, we have T-Rexes chasing people and ripping people apart. That wasn't in the film. That happened later. It's kind of funny when you say it that way too because it's like they found one mosquito that bit a dinosaur and then they made all of these different species.

Yeah, it's like we have stedosaurus. We have rhinocores. T-Rex, we have Velociraptors, like, all, you know, it's just like, what's happening here? And you really break it down. Maybe they did address that later on. I'm pretty sure they did. They probably did. Jurassic Park is pretty thorough.

Yeah, they buttoned that up, I'm sure. But in reality, the process is a bit more complicated than that. Colossil Biosciences is a biotechnology company working to genetically resurrect, lost megafauna and other creatures that had a measurably positive impact on our fragile ecosystems. And the thylacine is one of them. So I mentioned before that we would kind of get into the how all of this happens. So here it goes. Here's my best shot.

Okay. I do want to state I have a biology degree, even though it may not seem like it. So it's definitely a far cry from, do you remember doing the punnant squares in biology? It's like the diagrams that technically they're used to predict the genotypes of like crossbreeding, doing a crossbreeding experiment to see like your dominant and recessive alleles and how something is going to, you know, it's like a little grid. I'm doing a grid. Blue eyes, brown eyes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. So it's yeah, way more complicated than that. Obviously. But I just got a flashback to that. So there are some big time limitations to resurrecting extinct species because. DNA degrades over time, meaning bringing back an animal that is over, you know, seven million years, which is the current mark they have. Like after seven million years, it's kind of a no-go. They can't extract useful DNA.

That's a long time to have DNA. It only lasts for seven million years, so we really got to get on. I know. It is kind of wild now that you say that. I'm like, oh, yeah. But put into the context of all of history, like the billions of years, it's not that much. Yeah. But it's a no-go after that point because reconstructing a genome after that point is, it's difficult. You need intact genetic material. So as of today, with the technology advancements that we have up into this point, there's pretty much three possible methods to resurrect a species. And that's cloning, genetic reconstruction, and backbreeding. You may think of one particular animal when you think of cloning.

I'm going to ask you, do you? I don't know. Like the first cloned animal that you think of? I don't know. Oh, Dolly the sheep? Oh. Do you remember? No. Maybe it's just because I was so science-based in school that I know this, but Dolly the sheep was the first successfully cloned mammal that lived. Interesting.

Yeah. So the technique to bring her to life was perfected and used by scientists in the early 2000s to resurrect different various species. And of course, I have to say mammal because there have been successful clonings of simpler life forms. But this was a big deal. She was a whole ass sheep, you know? A whole ass sheep. She was a whole ass sheep. The Pyrenean ibex also called the Bucardo was a different species that lived in Spain and France

and was hunted to extinction in the late 1990s. So relatively recently. And scientists used frozen cells collected from Celia, who is the last surviving. female of her species to create a new embryo through cloning. They injected nuclei from Celia's cells into goat eggs that had been stripped of their own DNA. So it's kind of just like a shell to use as like a home for this IBEX's genetic material. So they combined these and then implanted that into a living goat to be used as a surrogate. And after repeated attempts and several different pregnancies. Only one goat carried a clone baby to full term and it was born and it lived,

but it died after only a few minutes, like I think it was seven minutes because it had some lung deformities. And that was not Dolly. I'm sure I think that was a little confusing, but that was an attempt to resurrect that Ivex, which they kind of did. They kind of did. It just- And they created a pregnancy, which is pretty wild. Yep. And it lived. It just not for long. Those scientists had relatively fresh DNA samples to work with. I mean, they collected it from the last living creature. The creature was alive when they were collecting the genetic material. Yeah.

Which is almost never the case, or literally never the case with de-extinction in regards to long-loss species like the thylacine. Without viable cells required for cloning, scientists consider another path, and that's genetically reconstructing a genome which involves DNA technology. that requires only pieces of broken genetic material, which can be gathered from hair samples, fur, bone, like things you can find in museum specimens, like a pelt or a skeleton. The very dumbed-down version of this method is essentially this. Scientists will sequence the DNA of the extinct species and line it up in comparison to the

DNA of a closely related living species. Okay. Then they cut and paste bits and pieces of sequences of DNA from the extinct species that are then kind of just inserted and put into the cells of the living species DNA. The result of this is a hybrid form of stem cells that can then be made into different types of cells like egg or sperm. Then those cells can be used for cloning purposes. So this whole thing is not going to result in a 100% resonant. erected species. It would be close, but it's not pure. It's a hybrid. Okay. And finally,

the last mechanism is backbreeding. It's a really slow process. And it's one that is pretty close to selective dog breeding, if you think about it. A lot of dog breeders selectively choose animals with particular traits that they want to see carried forward, like coat color, temperament, different sizes, you know, breed standards. And it's, back breeding, scientists use that line of thinking, but in reverse. They are reverse engineering evolution, kind of, by looking back in time to bring back ancestral genes of a particular animal. And there's a really well-known and pretty problematic example of this, and it actually has ties to Nazi Germany. In the 1920s and 30s, zoologist brothers Heinz and Lutzhek attempted to bring back the oryx,

which is a species of extinct cattle that disappeared around the 1600s. And they did this by selectively backbreeding with modern-day cattle that still had bits and pieces of some of the orc genes. So these back-red animals that they were creating were released during the war to roam the territory of the Third Reich and appeared in various propaganda materials in attempt to legitimize this expansion of Nazi Germany. And the project was problematic and received harsh criticism not only because of the methods the brothers were using, which I don't want to get into like the logistics of the genetics and the backbreeding stuff. But essentially they did it in a really sloppy way. There's a right and wrong way to do it. And they weren't doing it up to standard.

But also because of why the project was begun in the first place, rewilding that kind of blanket umbrella term of we're doing this to rewild was you. used as kind of a mask to conceal a really sinister undertone that was very telling of things that were happening to humans at that time. And it was this emphasis that placed this ideal Germanic character of the European landscape, which to get to attain this like pure landscape required ethnic cleansing and a form of like ecological restoration. So they were doing it as like, okay, it was very telling of what they were doing to Jewish people during the Holocaust. Like they were trying to create this overall picture of this is, we can create these genetically modified animals that are to our perfect standard.

Same as what we're trying to do with our people. It was the gist of it. Exactly. Yeah, I can see how that can be very controversial for sure, especially for the times, but also just in general to, I mean, it kind of brings you back to the conversation like, I mean, you're talking about the Holocaust, of course. So brings you back to genetically modifying people to be like what certain people perceive as the higher. And I'm using quotations, but no one can see me. I can see you.

And I think your voice is dripping with, you know, people understand that. Yeah, it's like the whatever you, certain people characterize as like the higher. qualities of people. Well, they're trying to achieve this like Aryan race, you know, of, and they were trying to do that with rewilding, quote unquote, rewilding this landscape and creating this preserve that they were essentially going to populate with this breed or this resurrected species of cattle. They were going to release them out and have it just be like this game preserve, essentially.

They weren't doing it. to integrate them and they were going to be protected. They were going to be hunted. Bring them back just to kill them. How did it work out? It didn't. It did not work out. They received flack almost immediately.

It was problematic, like I said, for a bunch of different reasons. The project failed overall, but they did go forward with doing backbreeding. And there are animals today. There's a breed of cattle called the heck cattle after their last name. That is a result. of their kind of like failed experiment. So they're not, again, like I mentioned, none of these resurrected species,

even if they are done, you know, to a T, they're not going to be 100% duplicates of an extinct species just because of the methods that need to be taken to resurrect them. There's going to be some cloning influence of other genetic material, things like that. But these heck cattle have a lot of characteristics from the oric. I keep saying in my mind, I say oric, but I'm thinking of those things from the Lord of the Rings. Is it Lord of the Rings? Orcs? Like those monsters, kind of? Do you know what I'm

talking about? I'm not a good person to ask this question. Not that I don't like Lord of the Rings. I've seen them, but it's been years and I am not like a, I don't remember any. A big fan. I'm not not a fan. It's just I don't know in depth of what an orc is. Yeah. I just know they're bad in the movie. They're bad. And there's a lot of them. And they look like monsters.

But anyway, back to the Tasmanian tiger. Not for that. Why even bring the species back to begin with? That's the question. And in short, by bringing back and reintroducing an animal that closely resembles the thylasein, because again, not going to be a pure carbon copy. They're actually called proxy species, this like hybrid, close. related animal that they're hoping to bring back.

Hopefully, by bringing them back, an ecological niche would be restored, which will hopefully then have a positive impact on the local ecosystem. Since the species disappeared, its former habitat has suffered biodiversity loss and subsequent ecosystem degradation. As an apex predator and a keystone species, the thylacine served an important ecological role that has since not been filled. It's extinction left a void and led to profound impacts. For example, proliferation of disease.

And in this moment, I am having a full circle moment in life because I did a paper on this exact disease in a vertebrae zoology class in college. And I'm just like geeking out because I knew what this disease was. And I will tell all of you. It's called DFTD. and that stands for devil facial tumor disease. And it affects Tasmanian Devils, which is another marsupial from the area that is still alive today. They're a threatened species and they're smaller than the thylacine. But this disease that affects them is a really serious cancer that produces these big facial tumors that can spread to their, like obviously on their face, but also into their neck and sometimes other parts of their bodies.

And it's always fatal. within a couple weeks to a couple months of contracting this cancerous tumor, the animals die. And it's obviously very serious because obviously the animals are dying. But the way that this cancer and this disease is spread, it's not viral. It's through contact. Oh. And Tasmanian devils are notorious for fighting with one another. So they're always biting each other.

They're always in close contact. and having these close altercations, and it's causing this disease to spread rampant, like, wildfire throughout the Tasmanian devil population. And it's so serious that a lot of experts think that if something isn't done to help mitigate this, that in less than 50 years, all the wild Tasmanian devils will be extinct from this one disease. That's wild. I've also never heard of a cancer that is contagious.

It's transmitted that way. Right. Yeah. So not only is it hard to stop because of the way it's transmitted, but also the Tasmanian devil, like I said, or maybe I said already, I'm not sure, but they're vulnerable. So they're not extinct yet, but they're endangered. And they also have some serious lack of genetic variation within their population, which exposes them to a higher risk of contracting disease because they're not as healthy. Yeah. It's the thought that if the thylacine was brought back onto the scene, that they would clearly help pick off sick Tasmanian devils because it's one of their historic prey items. So it's not contagious among other species? It has not leapt from Tasmanian devils to other species. Okay.

That's why it's called devil tumor, facial tumor. You might have said this already and I missed it, but how did the thylacine become extinct? What was the reason? Well, on the mainland of Australia, they think a lot of it had to do. do with the dingo. Oh, yeah, you did mention that. Yeah. Predation from the dingo.

And also, there's tons of other factors because when mainland Australia started becoming more and more developed human-wise, it's putting dingoes and thylacines in closer competition with one another, whereas before maybe their territories were more spread out. They didn't have as much conflict all the time. So anyways, that was kind of the main thought of on mainland Australia and in Papua New Guinea. but on Tasmania itself specifically, they link it almost exclusively and directly by bounties.

You know, government said similar to wolves and North America will pay you to go out and kill as many as you can. I was going to say this is reminding me a lot about wolves. Exactly. So that and obviously habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, etc. By reintroducing the thylacine into Tasmania specifically, they're hoping obviously will help mitigate that disease with Tasmanian devils. but also that it could help potentially address overpopulation of other animals that are happening.

So kind of the reverse, you know, there are some animals that are just out of control that a lot of, you know, people are now starting to hunt and all that because they're everywhere. It's the same scenario as wolves. Take away the wolves. The deer overpopulated and eat all the plants and then all it's like it's the whole hierarchy of all the different levels of species that it all goes back to the trophic cascade being a keystone species that has. you know, a disproportionate, yeah, they may be small in number compared to other species, but they have a disproportionate effect on others, like the cascade. This just mirrors the same issue, just a different species. And now we're speaking, now we're talking about bringing them back. And obviously that's what your episode is. But I'm just like, it brings back that initial frustration of like, let them be, don't hunt them.

And maybe you're going to get into this, but I just picture with a thylacine, you bring them back. Are they still going to be hunted? and are they going to disappear again? And it's just like this weird circle that continues. But it's just, it's bringing a lot of thoughts up. And I'm sure people listening agree too and are thinking back to your episodes that you've done about the wolves. And you're caught in the crosshairs one specifically where we talk like a lot about this

and it's just mirroring a lot. There's a lot of similarities. There's a lot of common themes because a lot of these issues are universal. It doesn't matter what you're really talking. talking about as far as location specific animal or species, the sentiments the same. The problems are the same. And you bring up kind of kind of a segue into my next portion of this, which is a debate, a great debate. And it's very complicated and there's a lot of different points on both sides that I think are valid. And that's why I love these episodes so much. And I think that, you know,

specifically with the cross, caught in the crosshairs episode that I did about the wolves and all of that, I have a clear stance, I think, but I love these episodes because I can see points from both sides. I have never, pretty much in anything in my life, whether it's this episode or just anything in general, have been like, I can't see anything of what you're saying. Like, I don't understand any point you're trying to make. I may have a stance and I may have my opinion, but that doesn't mean that I can't see that there are valid points that other people have that have different opinions. And this debate about de-extinction, resurrection biology, whether we're talking about thylacines or any other species, there are valid points on either side. There isn't a cut and dry,

yes or no, this is good or bad, it's black and white. And nothing is. And that's why I love these episodes. It's complicated and complex, yeah. Yeah. So as we continue to make leaps and bounds technologically and in our understanding of science, the glaring question is transforming. No longer are we wondering if we can bring species back from the dead, but should we? Deextinction is a hot button, complex issue, of course, my favorite. And there are numerous scientific, ethical, and societal considerations surrounding de-extinction. And I just put down a few to talk about. Otherwise, we have to create an entire new podcast, and I don't have the mental bandwidth to do that.

So let's see. Critics of resurrection biology have been quick to voice their concerns, right? way. Nope, not a good idea. Put the brakes on. No thank you. First of all, de-extinction is massively expensive. So why not throw all that money that would go into resurrecting a species into saving actual living species and to help conserve the habitat that is still left here versus trying to go back and bring back something into a world that is no longer theirs? Yeah, a very valid point. Next, the individuals that are brought back will likely suffer from poor genetic variation,

something that we've seen with genetic bottlenecks in living species on the brink of extinction today. The first thing that comes to mind for me personally is the Mexican gray wolf population. In the wilds, they all stem from a handful of remaining surviving Mexican gray wolves. And they have, yeah, right now they're, I think last count was like somewhere in the one to one-fifty. in the wild and that's great but they all are coming from a handful of original individuals so they're not totally inbred but the genetic variation is really thin and it goes back to your initial comment about that mosquito kind of you know like how much genetic variation is there from one sample so yeah you bring back one thylacine now what you know how are you going to breed it how is it going to create

And that's such a good point because especially say you do bring back a couple of them, but you're using all the DNA. Who are they supposed to breed with? And what are the results of those going to be? And that's not to say that that wouldn't be a huge, incredible, monumental scientific accomplishment. It's just, what do you do then? What's next?

In practice, it's not enough to bring back a viable population of a species, essentially. But say we get to the point where we can overcome that hurdle somehow. Say, okay, got it, it's not an issue. And we suddenly find ourselves with hundreds of thylacines or any other species. Where do we put them? Today, in 2022, we are already struggling to conserve habitat for species that we have left, let alone for an entire new population of a resurrected species, which additionally would likely be placed into a profoundly changed habitat, seeing as how whenever the hell they were last

here, depending on, again, what species you're talking about, hundreds to thousands to millions of years ago. You're putting them somewhere that they are not used to. I mean, nothing about this is natural, so I hesitate to say natural habitat, but you know what I mean. Yeah. We would be reintroducing an extinct species onto a landscape that they've been away from for a really, really long time. So that begs the question, are we introducing an invasive species? Are they now an invasive species. Because the world's been living without them for a while. Right. Yeah, that's such a good question. And then it also brings back to your first concern of if you're bringing back these species that don't have a place to be and maybe they are considered invasive species, we're dumping all

this money again into this species that may or may not even work here when we have other species that are in need of being saved. Right. And then on top of that, what? implications could that have on the environment and of course the species that are already here. It's just such a complex issue. And not only that, we have discussed in the past some of the challenges that species still living today face as far as their protected spaces. Where are they free from hunting? Are they fair game? Are they not? Can they be killed if they, whatever, eat your cow? Or, you know, where is the line drawn for already vulnerable species that are. living today. Obviously, there's going to be some issues with conflicts with people. That's inevitable.

So how are we to extend protection to a resurrected species and how does that correlate with living species today? Does that raise similar conflicts as their living counterparts? You know, like you said, the thylacines and the wolf connection. When they were hunted to extinction, a lot of it was because they were predating on livestock. Just like wolves today have been no. to do. So are we going to pour billions of dollars into resurrecting the thylacine, release them, have them predate on livestock and then kill them? It's like, what's the point? What are we doing? Yeah, what is the point of all this? Yeah. And then there's also the whole problem of who is going to teach the first resurrected species how to act like their species? Imagine. There's the first baby

woolly mammoth and its technical mother would likely be an Asian elephant because Asian elephants obviously are not a mammoth, but their closest living related species. So it would probably be put with other types of elephants to have, you know, learn how to be an animal, an elephant hybrid woolly mammoth hybrid. But of course, it's not going to be a woolly mammoth. They're learned behaviors such as their eating patterns, their social cues, movement patterns, and, you know, much more. Survival. Survival.

That's not going to be a thing. At least it won't mirror what it should have been or what it was because there is no one to learn from. There is no more woolly mammoths to learn from. Well, that kind of brings the question, too, of how much DNA plays a role into behavior. Well, that's the nature-nurture conversation. Yeah, but I just, I have to think of that. perspective of it too because is a woolly mammoth going to be born and of course an elephant is would

be like what you said an Asian elephant would be its quote unquote mother but would it have these inherent behaviors that it would just take over and no because of its DNA or would it be like what you're saying where it just wouldn't behave the same way would it have different survival it would be interesting I mean I'm sure we don't have the answers because we don't know but I would just be really, it's interesting to think about how DNA would affect behavior as well. Exactly. Because these behavioral traits of extinct animals are extremely difficult, if not probably impossible, to bring back in a resurrected species. We don't know, of course, because we haven't gotten that far. But it does beg the question. And of course, environment affects behavior. So then you go nature versus nurture. Again, in that where Willie mammoths were living on. this planet, the environment was much different and they had to do different things than they

probably would have to do to survive now. So it's just, there's a lot of unanswered questions. A lot of this is a big question mark because we don't know. And you're opening a big box of unanswered questions. And what happens, I just think of it too, how do you control who these species that you're creating breed with? Are you going to be creating all these subspecies of other weird things roaming around that we now have existing and how do they survive? What are their habits? How do they affect the environment? So it's just like this chain. It is. It's a huge domino effect that could be potentially unleashed if and when we decide to open this huge Pandora's box, this can of worms, this Pandora's box of worms, if you will. Yeah. It's heavy. Shit. It's

complicated. And that's why I'm so interested in it because it's not cut and dry. And it's no longer a hypothetical. Maybe 50 years ago, it was a, oh yeah, what would happen? That, you know, that's kind of interesting to contemplate. This is, this is happening. Yeah. This is happening. Evolutionary ecologist Michael Kinnison put it this way. In the process of trying to save them, we change them. The irony is that the more we intervene to save a species, the less wild and autonomous they become. So he just summed up everything we were just trying to say right there. In one sentence. Tasmanian wildlife biologist and honorary curator of vertebrae zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Nick Mooney, says, while people are distracted with this apparent silver

bullet for bringing back animals after they're extinct, we'll lose hundreds, hundreds of species to extinction. But not everyone agrees with that statement. Proponents of resurrection biology think actually the opposite. They believe that there is some real value in the science, as it could potentially help preserve and bring back current vulnerable living species, while some take a much less scientific-based and more of a morality-based stance, basically saying, well, we owe it to them to bring them back. Because humans and our activities have spread throughout the globe so expansively, based on a 2009 study by the European Commission and World Bank, only 10% of the world, as remote. And that qualification is based on the meaning that it takes more than 48 hours to

reach it from a city. And that was in 2009. So it's probably much less now. Essentially, we fuck things up for some species. And it is some people's belief that it is now our opportunity to write some of the wrongs that we've done with this new advancement of in technology. And we should take advantage of that. I mean, it is a good point if we have these vulnerable species if we could somehow clone them and duplicate them in a way that we're not affecting their breeding in a negative way where we're having all these inbred species. If we could do that, I mean, we could potentially save things like rhinos that are going extinct and all these different, I mean, it's a solid point. It's just, there's so many unanswered questions. It's complicated.

It's so complicated. Yeah. Unlike the premise of Jurassic Park to bring back individuals from a species just for pure entertainment purposes. An amusement park. An amusement park. Which obviously, of course, is also a very valid concern on the other side. Are we going to create them and put them in a zoo? Right. There's that as well.

Most people who fall in the pro-resurrection camp have high hopes for conservation and educational opportunities that will come with bringing back animals who have long since disappeared. Some aim to boost numbers of modern-day endangered species, like you were just pointing out, or to fill a void left in the ecosystem that a particular species left when they went extinct, kind of like we just talked about, with the thylacine. Also, the scientific knowledge researchers could glean from a living, breathing animal, would just add and offer invaluable insights into evolution as well,

instead of looking at and trying to piece together millions of years old, billion-year-old puzzle, you know, from rock and different fossils and things like that. you're bringing your lab to life and history to life. And there's even some talk about how if some species made a comeback, how they could expand biodiversity, help combat climate change, and solve the problem of invasive species. Colossal biotech, the company behind the Tasmanian Tiger Resurrection, also has its sights set on another species that could potentially save the world as we know it, and they are not the only ones who think this. A team of scientists led by Sergei and Nikita Zimov have created Pleistocene Park.

Located in northeastern Siberia, about 3,300 miles or about 5,400 kilometers from Moscow, and about half that distance from Anchorage, Alaska, this nature reserve is different than almost any other on Earth. Its purpose to recreate the Arctic of 30,000 years ago. Permafrost, which is frozen Arctic soil, holds more than a trillion tons of carbon. As the soil thaws, carbon escapes as greenhouse gases, and some scientists believe that this melting can accelerate global warming and is contributing to massive shifts in the climate. Sergei has been studying the permafrost and its rate of melting for decades now, and believes the solution to mitigate the melting is to transform the mossy tundra and forest environment

of today and to bring it back to its former grassland landscape, which is called the Mammoth step, an ecosystem which once dominated the high latitudes of Earth. And you can think of the Mammoth step as an Arctic version of a modern-day African Zavana. It's like a grassland type of ecosystem. The park is currently an enclosed area of about 20 square kilometers, so roughly eight square miles, and it's currently home to several different herbivore species like moose, bison, reindeer, and musk ox. And if they have their way, soon, it will be home to woolly mammoths. Beginning in 1988, animal reintroductions to this landscape began with horses and have grown since to what it is today. The whole idea is that these herbivores are released onto this landscape and do what they do best, which is graze.

They take down trees and shrubs and make room for. and stimulate growth of different grass species through their grazing and fertilization processes, and by removing this insulating layer of dense forest that right now this area is comprised of, when that happens, the permafrost layer cools and the melting of the permafrost slows down. Their behavior, this grazing behavior in things,

also influences the cooling in the winter months. They shift and move the snow around when they're grazing. You know, you've seen horses and bison, like in Yellowstone. You know, they're moving the snow around and making little patches open to get the little nibbles of grass. So when they're doing this, they're exposing the soil and the top layer to the really cold Arctic air, which also helps cool down the permafrost layer, even in the winter months when in the Arctic tundra is already freezing. Yeah, I'm like, it's already pretty cold there. If the Arctic permafrost underground layer was to warm too quickly, which is the big concern here, it would release some of the world's most dangerous

climate change accelerants into our atmosphere, severely impacting human beings and, of course, millions of other species. To put it into perspective, according to the Atlantic article on the park that I read, which I'm going to link in the sources, and I really recommend reading it because this is a wild idea, this park that's happening. And there's a lot that goes into it. I'm just, you know, obviously grazing the surface here. But if this intercontinental ice block warms too quickly, this thawing will send as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere each year as do all of America's SUVs, airliners, containerships, factories, and coal burning plants combined every single year. Wow, that's scary. So it's, it's big stakes, you know? This is a lot riding on this melting of the

permafrost layer and it's a big problem and big problems require big solutions and the Zimov's big solution is mammoth, woolly mammoths to be exact. Okay. Why? So with the help of church lab at Harvard, revive and restore, which is the California based nonprofit and now colossal, the biotech company, the resurrection of the mammoth is underway. Bone marrow, hair, skin, and muscle tissue and even liquid blood have been found in surprisingly amazing conditions due to individual animals being found within some of this melting permafrost, which we saw. And where did we see that? South Dakota? North Dakota. It was South Dakota at the fossil site. Yes. Yep. So remember, of course, there wasn't permafrost there that there was specimens from, but we did see one of the

exhibits. I think there were two or three mammoth babies that were, founded from frost. Yeah, we did see that. Yeah. And it just, I mean, this is a different subject, but it also just reminds me of when we did our Everest episode a long time ago where people have died, but their bodies are almost perfectly preserved because it's so cold up there. So kind of brings it back to what you're talking about where it's so cold that all of these things were able to be preserved over millions of years. Yeah, exactly. So the last mammoth went extinct, roughly 4,000 years ago. Oh, that's more recent than I realized.

It is. It is. And I actually saw this. I love when it's cool to, you know, know, know the exact figures 4,000 years ago, whatever. But there's also some facts that when you put it into relative terms, terms you can understand, it's really like, oh, wow. I saw this fact that said the last woolly mammoths were still roaming the earth. when the pyramids of Giza were being constructed. That does put it into perspective because those are things that are tangible today.

And you can see today. And the fact that they're that, wow, that's really cool. I didn't know that. I, for some, for whatever reason, I thought that they were extinct much, not that 4,000 years ago is recent, but much farther. Right. Relatively speaking, it's, it was yesterday. Yeah. The last mammoth went extinct about 4,000 years ago.

But thanks to the condition that the permafrost keeps, genetic material preserved in, like we just talked about, scientists have hope that it can be utilized. And in this case, it would be using genome editing technology. Researchers are hoping to use Asian elephant DNA that we just discussed as well, and swapping in mammoth traits in hopes to create a cold tolerant elephant hybrid thing creation. Like a woolly mammoth. Kind of, like a woolly mammoth Asian elephant hybrid, essentially, is what it is. Some examples of what this animal would look like is they're cutting and pacing, they're going back to that genetic, you know, using CRISPR technology and things like that, combining traits and changing traits of what we know as the Asian elephant

today. So, for example, shrinking their ears down. So they're smaller, so they're not these huge ears. Obviously, Asian elephants have smaller ears than their African elephant counterparts, but in an Arctic environment, big ears like that, those are going to freeze and get really cold. So they're hoping to shrink down the size of their ears. They want to add cold resistant hemoglobin. So it's part of their blood that will help keep them warmer. I could use some of that. Yeah.

Inject Cassie with that. She's second in a lot. A nice layer of insulating fat and thickening up their coat. So Asian elephants do have a really fine coat. of fur and hair, but they want to obviously bulk that up. So it's more of a blanket of long fur similar to what mammoths had. And it does sound so out of this world. It really truly does.

But it's here and it's happening. As of 2014, more than 15 Asian elephant genes have been edited. But apparently that isn't the hard part somehow. Right. Like they got that down. That's not hard. It's the embryos. George Church, the so-called founding father of genomics, stated that because surrogacy is out of the question as Asian elephants are endangered species, not a lot of scientists are going to be lining up and willing to mess with an already fragile reproductive process and an already fragile population of animals.

So getting an assembled embryo together that can survive to term is the real challenge here because they're going to have to be nurtured in an engineered environment. So they won't have any moms. Right. So they're not looking to implant kind of like we're talking about with the ibex and the goat and the sheep of kind of like implanting it into a surrogate. Lab grown. Yeah, exactly.

They're thinking that this is going to have to be more lab engineered, which presents a whole host of issues and complications. And there's also the fact that the gestation period for an elephant is just shy of two years. It's a long time. So needless to say, it's a lot of, it's a lot. It's a whole hell of a lot. But it's not a deterrent. The project is moving forward.

And actually, Church was interested in creating mammoths for years. And he's one of the co-founders of Colossil as well, just so everyone knows. And he was interested in creating mammoths for a long, long time. but he kind of ramped up and accelerated his efforts and interests after meeting Sergey at a conference in 2013, who is the leader of Pleistocene Park and the co-founder of Pleistocene Park. Okay. So they kind of are joining forces here and pushing this forward. Together, they hope that the first Woolly Mammoth will be walking within the park in the next decade,

along with additional species of different mega herbivores, and of course the addition of some of the first. carnivorous species as well to keep herds healthy, keep them moving. We all know how important that is. So this is happening in our lifetime. Yes. This is not like a far off thing. I know that this is like very science based and we're getting really technical and you're using a lot of science terminology. But can we just stop for a second to talk about how cute a baby woolly mimic would be? Okay. So you're going out there else. That's not, we shouldn't be focusing on health. fucking cute they would be.

They're going to be so cute. They're little footprints in the snow. A little fuzzy baby hair. But they're not going to be exact woolly mammoths. So we don't even really know what they would look like. But they're going to be fuzzy. They're going to be fuzzy. That is true.

Okay. Sorry. Okay. So reeling it back in. It's definitely a radical and bold hypothesis because it is just that right now. hypothesis, but it just may work. The park hosts from time to time different groups, they do educational tours of the grasslands, and their ice caves. Wooden ladders stretched deep underground, and the Zimovs bring students and reporters alike down through the layers of permafrost to show

what 30,000-year-old mud looks like and why it is so important to preserve it. The park is a work in progress and one that the team hopes will expand and not just be a singular park, meaning they hope that more Pleistocene parks pop up around the world. They hope that this is an idea that is adopted and executed in different areas of Arctic ecosystems to help protect the permafrost, because it's not in this one area. Yeah, it's a very new take on conservation. Nikita, who is Sergei's son, explains, quote, It will be cute to have mammoths running around here. I'm not the only one. But there's a but.

I'm not doing this for them or for any other animals. I'm not one of these crazy scientists that just wants to make the world green. I am trying to solve the larger problem of climate change. I'm doing this for humans. I have three daughters and I'm doing it for them. Aw. So very nice take. And their daughters will get to pet the cute little woolly mammoths.

Perhaps. If it goes to. author Bill Bryson has an analogy that I really love and I think it's very fitting. It's in his book, if somebody wants to read it in its entirety, the book is called A Short History of Nearly Everything. And I condense this analogy, but it really illustrates something that I think is really important to consider when we have this discussion of essentially playing God. That's what this is. That's what this whole thing is about. And we've been talking a lot about billions and millions of years and different mass extinctions

and this and that. And it's hard to get a scope of just how many species have come and gone and how old the earth is. And he did a really good job of condensing all of Earth's history into 24 hours. So this is the quote, my condensed version of the quote. If you imagine the 4.5 billion odd years of Earth's history compressed into just a normal 24-hour earthly day, then life begins very early around 4 a.m. With the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms. Fast forward to just before 10 o'clock at night, plants begin to pop up on the land.

Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow. By 10.24 p.m., the earth is covered in the great forests, whose residue gives us all of our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plot onto the scene just before 11 p.m. At 21 minutes to midnight, they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and 17 seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history on this scale would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded up day, continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away.

Ocean basins come and go. Ice sheets advance and withdraw. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long. So with all of that in mind, all of human existence, which is a mere blip in Earth's history, and that's all human existence, not the human existence that we know now. I'm talking like early humans, Neanderthals, things like that. So given that we're modern humans have been on this earth for a mere like a couple of seconds,

do we really have the right to tamper with the order of things in the way that we're about to crack into? Like, yes, there's preventative measures that we have talked about before that we can and should be taking with preservation of our environment and the species that are vulnerable and threatened right now, especially given all of the problems that Earth has and is facing. But it's just the question of once the curtain closes for a species, should it stay there? It has for billions of years. No one has interfered. Nothing has ever been done. The earth is shifting and changing all of the time. So kind of like the question is, who are we to do something about it? Or now that we can do something about it, should we? It's just such a, I keep saying this, it's complicated. It's complicated, but it also

brings me back to the very beginning when you talked about in this episode where you said the world has changed over time, over millions of years, and species have gone extinct, but this is the first mass extinction that we're seeing that is human caused. So now that we've caused this, is it our responsibility to step in? Because it's not the natural way of the world. it's human caused, or is it like how you're saying when species don't survive, new life comes in other ways? And should we just allow that process to continue? That is the question. And I'm going to end this with one last quote. I know I've done three now. The intro, the one I just read and this one. But this one is just so relevant and so poignant. And it's again, bringing it back to Jurassic Park

with Dr. Ian Malcolm, who is my favorite character. He's so wise. I combined actually parts of two of his species that were in two different movies, and specifically their Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, if anybody is a big fan like I am. And he says, human beings have no more right to safety or liberty than any other creature on this planet.

We not only lack dominion over nature, we're subordinate to it, and now here we are, with the opportunity to re-reliance to re-relivening. life at our fingertips. You. You control the future of our survival on planet Earth. According to you, the solution is genetic power, but that same power could devastate the food supply, create new diseases, alter the climate even further. How many times do you have to see the evidence? How many times must the point be made? We're causing our own extinction. Too many red lines have been crossed, and our home has in fundamental ways been polluted by avarice and political

megalomania. Genetic power has now been unleashed, and of course, that's going to be catastrophic. We convince ourselves that sudden change is something that happens outside the normal order of things, like a car crash, or that it's beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We don't conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as woven into the very fabric of existence. Yet I can assure you, It most assuredly is, and it's happening now. These creatures were here before us, and if we're not careful, they're going to be here after. We are going to have to adjust to new threats that we can't even imagine. We have entered a new era, and that's it.

That's all I got. Dang, that's a note to be left on. And I'm really excited you did this episode because you've been talking about it for a while. And like you said, it brings up so much conversation. and debate and thought. I feel like everyone listening right now, our minds are just going wild with thoughts of what ifs

and what's going to happen and just thoughts of the past and things. So I think it was a really fun episode to get everyone's minds thinking about what you said. It's not when is this going to happen. It's not if this is going to happen. It is happening. This is going to happen.

And it's in the process of happening. What do we think about it? And I'd be super curious to know what everyone listening thinks about this topic too. Me too. Because to be honest, yeah, if I had like gun to my head, what side do I fall on? I could tell you. But there is valid points on all ends of this, on every part of the spectrum. You know, there really is.

And we are entering a new, a new era of having to create and come up with new solutions for these really serious problems that we face globally, not only with climate change, but also with, you know, threatened species. And it's just, of course, it's, what is that movie? It's complicated. But it has, it's like that rom-com. It's complicated. I keep saying that and it just keeps popping into my mind. But it's true. There's just, it, it is complex. And we have to start thinking of new ways to combat it and to find solutions and some of them seem extreme and they are but we have extreme issues as well so everyone taking five minute showers and having meatless Mondays is not doing it anymore which is obviously important but the whole point is this is a problem is bigger yeah so there are three things I want

to recommend before we stop two of them are books and one is a movie cool is a Jurassic Park no Okay, so four, Jurassic Park. Number one. Number two, so the two books, first is one that I have read, and the second is one that I want to read now. The first one is called Resurrection Science, Conservation, De-Extinction, and the Precarious Future of Wild Things. I actually read this many years ago and re-skimmed it for this episode.

It came out in 2015. It's really good. The second one I want to read now because of this episode, and it's called Woolly, the true story of the quest to revive one of history's most iconic extinct creatures. And then the third is a movie that I watched, oh my God, in college, I think. And to be honest, I don't exactly remember what happens, but it's kind of relevant to the story. It's called The Hunter. And it's a movie that is basically, surrounds this biotech company, hires this mercenary guy to go out into the Tasmanian wilderness to hunt for the last Tasmanian tiger.

Okay. So definitely relevant. It's relevant. It's not anything about de-extinction or anything, but if someone wants like a fictional story that kind of relates to what some of the things we talked about, that's something you could throw on, I guess. But yeah, that's it. And I'm sorry for the heavily science-based episode and National Park unrelated episode.

You mentioned national parks multiple times. so I think it counts. Even though we did into a deep dive in a specific national park, you did mention national parks like five or six times. And you gave book recommendations, which I feel like is just everyone loves book. I love book recommendations. Okay, but that doesn't make it count.

Whatever. I don't know. I will see how I feel as far as using it as my freebie. I guess maybe I can stretch it. But I think it was really interesting to research. And of course, it elicits a lot of a lot of conversation. And that's the whole point. And like you said, I hope people's minds are like going a million miles a minute right now.

And you have these conversations with people because it is relevant. Did I say elephant or relevant? I both work. Okay. Yeah, they are interchangeable. It is relevant because it is happening. It's not something that is something fun to contemplate. plate as a hypothetical. It's something that's happening and something that we will likely see within

our lifetimes and if not our children's. So that's it. I'm done talking and that's it. Well, I'll leave everyone on that note. Think about it. Think what your stance is. We'd love to hear about what it is. We're going to be posting on our social media like we always do with pictures and stuff. Let us know your thoughts. We'd love to know. But in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back. Bye. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Become an outsider by joining our Patreon where you'll gain access to monthly bonus stories and exclusive content. And remember,

when you support our partners, you're supporting our show. To access our special discount codes along with source information from today's episode, check out the show notes. For information on the show, to shop our merch store, sign up for our newsletter and more, visit npaddpodcast.com. And if you're enjoying the show, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. Pop over to Progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by.

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