Recently, researchers have found chunks of mammoth tissue up in frozen cliffs near the Yana River in Russia. These chunks included bone marrow, hair, skin, and fat. The hope is to find a live cell, or an intact nucleus of a mammoth cell. The latter is more realistic, as an intact nucleus is more likely to preserved that the actual cell itself (Zimmer). While listening to NPR on the way home from soccer, the de-extinction of mammoths was a prime topic of conversation. While it’s apparently old news, new breakthroughs have been recently discovered and traits of mammoths are supposed to be recreated by 2018. Throughout this section, I will discuss the recent de-extinction process and the benefits to bringing mammoth traits back to life. Technology has come a very long way since Dolly the Sheep. In Dolly, a cell was used to insert DNA into an empty egg. Then, electric shock was used to get the egg to divide (Shapiro). Now, scientists would place developing eggs into…show more content… Tundra contributes to the human-driven climate change, unfortunately. Without grasslands to insulate the tundra's permafrost, the permafrost is melting, releasing greenhouse gases that have been trapped for hundreds of thousands of year's beneath the earth’s surface. To put this in perspective, this damage is equivalent to burning all of the world’s forests 2.5 times (Novak). The grasslands simultaneously sequestered atmospheric carbon and promoted higher biodiversity. The mammoths were instrumental in maintaining the grasslands as they tramped down and dug through snow to get at nutritious grasses underneath. This process reduced the insulative power of snow, sinking the Arctic chill deep down into the earth, keeping it frozen (Ronson). Bringing back the woolly mammoths would be a reasonable effort toward combating climate change, as it is very real and becoming a large
