• TomMasz@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The world they lived in is long gone along with the food they ate and the rest of their species. It seems almost cruel to bring them back.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s not that long gone. There were still mammoths around when the pyramids were built. Plus there’s still huge swaths of tundra and taiga that they could live on, with a lot of the same plants, even if it’s quite a bit warmer.

      • illi@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        In the grand scheme of things the pyramids were built relatively recently, but I’d still consider it quite long ago

        • stoly@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Measured in human life it’s long ago. measured at universal scales, it was nothing.

    • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Not advocating for restoring the mammoth, but this is a dangerous line of argument.

      With climate change and ongoing mass extinctions, many current species are or will soon be in the same situation that re-introduced mammoths would be—and you could use the same argument to say that trying to preserve them is cruel so we should kill off any current species facing environmental stress.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Nah. It’s still the same place. They died out within the time frame of completely modern humans.

    • Ænima@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      It’s worse when you consider the state of the world and the warming. They’d have about 20 sq\km of land capable of supporting them and they’d have to share it with those psychos, polar bears.

  • vegeta@lemmy.worldOP
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    3 months ago

    I hope they have put a substantial amount of thought into potential problems that could arise. (Not that it will actually be like JP)

  • theDutchBrother@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    “Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, They Didn’t Stop To Think If They Should”

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I remember reading about this in 5th grade. 25 fucking years ago. I’ll believe it when I see it…

    • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      There are about 2000 wild tiger left, I found this article from 2011 saying that they might be extinct in the wild by 2030.

      So there might be 2000 ecological niches for smilodon to fill in 5 years. We better hurry then.

  • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago
    • Step 1: acquire genetic material
    • Step 2: supplement material with closely related extant species <- We are here
    • Step 3: Get an egg cell with your Frankenstein-DNA to survive and divide
    • Step 4: Produce a healthy baby
    • Step 5: Get a small population in a Zoo/Park
    • Step 6: have a permanent wild population in a specific area
    • Step 7: have enough of those areas to declare repopulation a success

    Is fixating on the mammoths here first-world centrism? The article mentions 4 other species that have way better chances. Also, given how far we are from actual wild mammoths, that “it can solve climate change” argument is just wrong the way it’s been presented.

  • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Does anyone else feel like this is irresponsible? Like, I get it, humans have been destroying the ecosystems of endangered and extinct animals for awhile now. But the world is actively warming up. And even if this is successful, how do we create enough of them to survive and procreate without defects etc. And where the hell will they live? I just have some concerns.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Nearly every species ever has gone extinct. What you see around you are those few species that made it to the present. So, yes, on one hand it doesn’t matter. On the other hand, a new population of elephants isn’t going to affect the world and we can appreciate them.

    • Noobnarski@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It is likely that we humans or our ancestors were responsible for the extinction of most of the megafauna around the world, so we would only be undoing our own damage I guess.

      • FireWire400@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        We’d first have to undo all the damage we did to the rest of the Earth which, even if we wanted, we couldn’t do.

        As far as I understand, the whole “de-extinction” thing is just a huge flex on our part.

  • sweetpotato@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    So we’re talking about de-extinction at a time when 70% of the planet’s biodiversity has been lost in the last 50 years?