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The Plan to Bring Back Extinct Animals, Without Cloning

Some 'rewilding' efforts are looking at living species to bring back extinct animals like the ancient aurochs.
Aurochs skeleton at the National Museum of Denmark. Image: Wikimedia/Malene Thysson

Think de-extinction, and after the inevitable flash of Jurassic Park, your mind probably then settles on woolly mammoths. After the discovery of a well-preserved wild mammal carcass in 2013, the potential to use DNA to clone the extinct species, though still distant, seemed rooted in more than just sci-fi.

But mammoths aren't the only option when it comes to re-introducing long-dead animals. Modern Farmer has a great story on the attempt to bring back the ancient species of aurochs, a type of cattle that exists not only in Game of Thrones, but also in Europe, Asia, and North Africa—or which did, at least, before it went extinct in 1627.

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In her feature, Kristan Lawson explains that several groups are attempting to bring back the ancient bovine in "rewilding" efforts. The point is not to revive an awesome huge species just because it'd be cool to have them around (though there's that too), but to promote a biodiversity that was lost as certain animals, particularly large predators, died out.

One group looking to bring back the aurochs, the Taurus Foundation, told Modern Farmer that, "We started this initiative because large herds of natural grazers are necessary to preserve European open landscapes and biodiversity."

Cave painting of an aurochs-type creature. Image: Wikimedia/Prof saxx

Other animals that have been touted for rewilding include lynxes, which went extinct in Britain hundreds if not thousands of years ago but which one charity is trying to re-introduce to Scotland. That kind of localised "de-extinction" effort wouldn't involve the kind of cloning Michael Crichton would make you think of: The lynx isn't extinct everywhere and would just need relocating.

Similarly, the Netherlands-based organisation Rewilding Europe is looking at re-introducing existing species such as wolves, bison, bears and jackals in various areas across the continent, as well as seeking to bring back the aurochs.

Aurochs are a bit trickier, of course, given that they're extinct everywhere. Additionally, you can't just clone an aurochs, because there's nothing to clone—we don't have any soft tissue preserved. So enthusiasts are instead attempting to get as close to an aurochs as possible with what they have, either by cross-breeding different non-extinct cattle breeds, or playing around with ancient DNA that could be preserved in the genes of still-living species to figure out what genetic material relates to aurochs-style traits.

A passenger pigeon in captivity. Image: Wikimedia/ J G Hubbard

It's not the only attempt to resurrect an extinct animal through its living descendants. Indeed, one plan to bring back the mammoth shuns direct cloning for instead inserting some ancient mammoth genes into a modern-day elephant, to create a hybrid.

The same is happening in the attempt to bring back the passenger pigeon, which had its last hurrah almost exactly 100 years ago. As well as straight-up cloning, researchers are considering ways of altering living pigeon species' genomes to make them more passenger pigeon-like, rather than exact carbon copies.

And let's face it, that's perhaps as close to extinct species as we really need to get for rewilding purposes.