How can we bring extinct species back from the dead?

By Kate The Chemist,

Published September 25, 2024 at 4:00 AM CDT

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A new “Jurassic Park” movie is coming out next year, the latest installment of the blockbuster series all about the dangerous hubris in trying to bring dinosaurs back from extinction. Paleogeneticist Beth Shapiro says the science may be flawed, but cloning extinct species is more realistic than you may think. In fact, that work is already underway — but with the slightly friendlier woolly mammoth.

Unfortunately, extinction is just a part of life.

Scientists estimate that over 5 billion plants and animals have vanished from Earth over the millennia, which is about 99.9% of all species that have ever existed.

It’s only been relatively recently that humans have been the leading cause of those extinctions.

According to leading theories, our planet has experienced five major mass extinctions. The first one started 444 million years ago, when the ice sheets advanced and then melted during the Late Ordovician extinction event. In the process, we lost 85% of all marine species.

But that was nothing compared to “The Great Dying,” a nickname given to the Permian-Triassic extinction, where 96% of species were lost. Scientists believe this one was caused by volcanoes that ejected gasses into the atmosphere, burned a hole in the ozone layer, and then acidified the oceans. Fungus was about the only thing that thrived during that time.

People tend to be most familiar with the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, the one responsible for killing the dinosaurs, but we’ve also had the Late Devonian extinction, where the oxygen in the ocean plummeted and the majority of the marine life died.

And the End-Triassic extinction event, where massive volcanic eruptions took out 80% of the species, including the decimation of the “nightmare eel” conodont populations.

Beth Shapiro is an evolutionary biologist who specializes in the genetics of ice age animals and plants. She's the chief science officer for Colossal Biosciences. — Beth Shapiro is an evolutionary biologist who specializes in the genetics of ice age animals and plants. She's the chief science officer for Colossal Biosciences, a company working to de-extinct the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo.

But scientists say that we’re currently undergoing a sixth mass extinction event at this very moment — one caused in large part by human activity.

Humans are responsible for the total elimination of species like the ground sloth, the Steller's sea cow, and the golden toad. In the last century alone, 500 vertebrate species have disappeared.

We’ve over-hunted them, destroyed their habitats through development or pollution, and introduced predators or diseases. Case-in-point, the dodo bird.

“It's the icon of how awful we can be,” says Beth Shapiro, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. “They went extinct within just a few decades of people first appearing on Mauritius, which is the only place that dodos ever lived.”

Shapiro is also a MacArthur Fellow, which scientists commonly refer to as the “Genius Award,” and she’s the chief science officer for Colossal Biosciences.

This relatively new company is using ancient DNA to try to “de-extinct” species, like the dodo bird.

Beth Shapiro and her team travel to places like Siberia to hunt down old bones. — Beth Shapiro and her team travel to places like Siberia to find old bones and extract DNA.

What exactly is de-extinction?

“De-extinction” is the science of resurrecting extinct species, and the science of inventing new types of previously extinct species.

This mostly theoretical idea has been around for over 40 years, but it finally earned a name when the TEDxDeExtinction conference went viral in 2013.

Beth Shapiro doesn’t love the word “de-extinction,” partly because it’s hard to conjugate.

But Shapiro says it’s a word the media generated back in the 1980s when Berkeley Professor Allan Wilson found some DNA from a quagga, a half-horse/half-zebra that had been extinct for more than 100 years, at the Mainz Museum of Natural History in west Germany.

“This was the first time that anybody had actually gotten DNA from something that was dead. And so it opened up this whole new realm of potential research,” says Shapiro. “In fact, this work inspired Michael Crichton to write ‘Jurassic Park.’”

On excursions Beth Shapiro works closely with other scientists and local miners to dig up old animal bones which hold the key to ancient DNA. — Beth Shapiro travels all around the world working with other scientists and local miners to search for well-preserved old animal bones.

So is it possible to bring dinosaurs back like in 'Jurassic Park'?

No.

In Michael Crichton’s iconic novel, a team of scientists find dinosaur DNA in a mosquito that’s been perfectly preserved in amber.

The fictional scientists filled in the gaps of the dino DNA with frog DNA, in an attempt to bring dinosaurs back to Earth — and make them the highlight of a new theme park. What could go wrong?

Shapiro says the science in that movie quickly falls apart from the jump. In her opinion, it was a “weird choice” to use frog DNA to help clone a dinosaur.

“Because even at the time, we knew that birds were dinosaurs, but whatever,” she remarked.

Whether Shapiro likes it or not, separating the science from the science fiction in “Jurassic Park” is a frequent request. Especially since the 1993 Steven Spielberg film became an enormous hit and spawned countless sequels (the next one, “Jurassic World Rebirth” starring Scarlett Johansson, is scheduled to come out in 2025).

The truth is, even with modern technology, there’s no way we are bringing dinosaurs back from the dead. To do that, we would need a living cell, and for dinosaurs, that no longer exists — not even in amber.

“There is no DNA in dinosaur remains. Dinosaur remains are rocks, and rocks don’t have DNA,” explains Shapiro.

Working to revive the woolly mammoth

Beth Shapiro says most people who work in ancient DNA like her, spend a lot of time digging in places like the Arctic, Siberia, Alaska, and Canada's Yukon. — Beth Shapiro says most people who work in ancient DNA, like her, spend a lot of time digging in places like the Arctic, Siberia, Alaska, and Canada's Yukon.

There are a lot of animals that we can get the DNA for, however.

Scientists estimate that we can sequence the DNA for species that have lived within the last 6.8 million years. After that, the DNA is going to be too old and too damaged to be useful. Sorry (not sorry), velociraptors!

That’s why scientists like Beth Shapiro have focused on bringing back species like the woolly mammoth, which went extinct about 4,000 years ago because of human hunting and warmer climates reducing their habitat. But since mammoths lived in freezing cold areas, their frozen DNA has been preserved in the permafrost and saved from decay -- meaning there’s a better chance to bring them back to life.

Shapiro is author of the bestselling book “How to Clone a Mammoth,” and she spends a lot of time searching for mammoth bones in mining zones in Siberia.

Using the DNA from the bones, her research group is working to match up the mammoth DNA with the species closest living relative. In this case, it's the Asian elephant. Then, with the help of computers, AI, and eventually cloning, they start to piece together a puzzle.

Beth Shapiro shows off a bison skull they found on an expedition.

“We need to edit in that genome to make it express those mammoth traits,” Shapiro says. Imagine an Asian elephant with luxurious mammoth hair, and you’ve got the idea.

“So then we have a living cell in a dish in a lab that is mostly Asian elephant, and a little bit mammoth like. What do you end up with in the end?” Shapiro says. “It’s an Asian elephant that has mammoth DNA. Is it a mammoth? Is it mammoth 2.0? Is it an Arctic adapted elephant? I think yeah, it’s all those things.”

To find out about Beth Shapiro’s work reviving extinct species — and how her work is already helping save contemporary animals on the edge of extinction — listen to the latest episode of the KCUR Studios podcast Seeking A Scientist.

Additional sources from Seeking A Scientist:

Seeking A Scientist is a production of KCUR Studios. It's made possible with support from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, where scientists work to accelerate our understanding of human health and disease.

It's hosted by Dr. Kate Biberdorf, AKA Kate the Chemist. Our senior producer is Suzanne Hogan. Our editor is Mackenzie Martin. Our digital editor is Gabe Rosenberg.

This episode was mixed by Suzanne Hogan with support from Celia Morton, Byron Love and Genevieve DesMarteau.

Our original theme music is by The Coma Calling. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.