De-extinction scientists are planning to bring long-extinct, giant creatures that once roamed the Earth back and put them in a theme park.
And no, that’s not a description of Jurassic Park’s premise. According to a tremendous cover story in the New York Times magazine, biologists started a project called Revive & Restore to bring formerly extinct animals back to life. The carrier pigeon has the most likely path to success, but the team is also working on reviving the wooly mammoth.
And where will the wooly mammoth go? Revive & Restore is already working with a Russian researcher, Sergey Zimov, who created a preserve for potential mammoth-carousing called Pleistocene Park in Siberia.
It’s not clear what the benefits to humanity will be other than an increase in awesomeness if this happens, and a variety of critics are concerned this effort will be too costly, cruel to the animals, and ultimately futile. No one has mentioned velociraptors yet.
David Haussler, the co-founder of the Genome 10K Project, talked to the Times in an attempt to quell concerns about the project. “There’s always this fear that somehow, if we do it, we’re going to accidentally make something horrible, because only nature can really do it right. But nature is totally random. Nature makes monsters,” Haussler said, pretty much guaranteeing he will be played by Richard Attenborough whenever the movie version of real life comes out.
Jeff Goldblum is unfortunately not affiliated with the project.