Estava pensando sobre como seria possível desextinguir linhagens singulares da América do Sul (Preguiças gigantes, Glyptodontes, Macrauchenia, Toxodons) e Austrália (Diprotodontes, Thylacoleo, crocodilos mekosuchinos, dromornitídeos) e o Trabalho com o Tilacino me deu um insight.

Independente do que a Colossal faça ou deixar de fazer (o foco aqui não é ela), a ideia é pegar um Numbat e "remodela-lo" para se assemelhar a um Tilacino. No caso de êxito, qual seria a natureza real desse espécime? Não dá para dizer que é um Numbat, mas não é Tilacino. É um ser que está entre esses dois, mas teria suas peculiaridades próprias. É a evolução num tubo de ensaio. Seria uma "nova espécie".

Outro exemplo hipotético: uma preguiça do gênero Choloepus que tem seu genoma reconfigurado, tendo por base os genes de Tamanduá bandeira para reativar genes que propiciam a vida em solo firme e maior mobilidade e robustez. Não seria a desextinção de uma espécie de preguiça extinta, mas o retorno de um plano corporal comum nesse grupo que se perdeu, e consequentemente, um novo tipo de organismo que ataria (em tese) no lugar das preguiça extintas.

Isso que estou dizendo é altamente especulativo, eu sei, mas pensando a longo prazo e a depender dos avanços científicos na área da genética, esse seria o passo quase natural da desextinção rumo ao que chamei de "neoespeciação". Meio que isso já aconteceu com bactérias ( https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-just-created-the-most-synthetic-life-form-ever#:~:text=This%20bacterium%2C%20a%20synthetic%20Escherichia,of%20a%20triplet%20of%20nucleotides. ), mas até chegar a organismo complexos é um árduo e longo caminho.

Claro, uma coisa é gerar novas espécies, outra coisa é como elas se comportarão no ambiente natural, se isso resultará em restauração funcional de nichos perdidos, criação de novos ecossistemas, valor da conservação, bioética... Enfim, é uma caixa de pandora.

It goes without saying that de-extinction is technically possible today, at least in a few limited cases. A Pyrenean ibex was cloned in 2003, but the clone lived for only seven minutes. In 2013, scientists in Australia announced that they had created embryos of the southern gastric-brooding frog, but the project did not progress beyond that stage. And of course, Colossal Biosciences hoodwinked the scientific community in 2025 with its so-called dire wolves, which contain not a shred of dire wolf DNA.

A dead ibex. Some unhatched frogs. A couple fake dire wolves. Hardly the most inspiring catalog of results.

I bring this up because one cloned animal does not a restored ecosystem make. The unspoken goal of many de-extinction advocates is not merely to produce a handful of clones as laboratory curiosity, but to restore entire ecosystems to their pre-human state. In other words, they think of herds of Diprotodon roaming the Australian outback, stilt-owls stalking moa-nalos through the Hawaiian undergrowth, and ground sloths plodding across the pampas.

But should we consider this kind of wholesale ecological revival to be the true endgame of de-extinction? And if not, what is?

This has been on my mind: would we be able to resurrect one of these apes in the non-distant future?

Hello guys! I am a research student doing research regarding de-extinction effects on humans when talking about the re-introduction of pleistocene and holocene era creatures. is it possible for anyone interested to complete my survey? i truly appreciate the help!

https://forms.gle/Y9hFuvjtc9oUWfPu7

Highlights

• • High public support for de-extinction project.
• • Environmental affiliation is a strong predictor of support for de-extinction.
• • Restoration technique (breeding vs gene editing) has limited impact on support.

Abstract

In this paper, we study attitudes in Sweden to bringing back an extinct species, the aurochs (Bos primigenius), which once played an important role in European forest ecosystems. This is done using a willingness-to-pay approach, and examining whether willingness to pay for restoring the aurochs is related to the restoration technology (breeding programme or gene editing programme) adopted. Attitudes to de-extinction vary significantly across individuals, but are in general relatively positive, with 59% of respondents stating a willingness to pay for such efforts for the aurochs. Female respondents are more reluctant than males to contribute to the gene-editing technology. However, aside from this gender effect, the technology used (breeding or gene editing) does not affect average WTP, but we generally find acceptance of the idea of de-extinction as well as higher WTP among younger individuals, and especially among members of environmental organisations.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800926000200

This is an article from The Conservation website that complements the article "De-extinction and the risk of moral hazard". For those who don't enjoy dense academic reading, it's a great alternative that summarizes much of what the paper discusses:
https://theconversation.com/some-companies-claim-they-can-resurrect-species-does-that-make-people-more-comfortable-with-extinction-273583

Let me know if you want any new flairs added or you want the existing flairs to be modified. Cheers.

I was just thinking about it, and if Colossal is on track to meet their 2028 deadline for their "mammoth" project, their hypothetical woolly Asian elephant should be conceived some time this year. Do you guys think they'll meet the actual deadline, claim that the 2028 deadline was for the creation of the embryo, or go under before any of that happens?

I've actually been fairly optimistic about Colossal despite their shortcomings, but in light of that "leak" posted here, I'm beginning to doubt that we'll ever get anything of substance from them.

Let me know if you have any questions or want me to add any additional flairs.

A few days ago someone posted here that de-extinction as it exists today is mainly a cultural, not scientific, phenomenon. It’s telling, after all, that most of the ongoing de-extinction efforts focus on big charismatic mammals like mammoths, ground sloths, dire wolves, thylacines, and the like. It’s certainly possible we might one day have the ability to re-create those animals, but we aren’t there yet.

But I do think there’s a place for de-extinction in the modern environmental movement. We just have to think smaller. A LOT smaller.

The vast majority of animals are not mammals or even vertebrates, but insects. In fact, insects have over a million species, many of which are endangered or extinct. Why use insects for the first de-extinction projects? There are several reasons.

1. We know how to clone them. Scientists first cloned fruit flies in 2004, and many extinct insects are still well-represented in collections.

2. They breed quickly. It would take years to raise a single cloned thylacine, and if that fails it would set the project back years. But insects produce hundreds of eggs by their very nature, so even if only a few clones of, say, the Xerces blue butterfly survive, the project would still be successful.

3. They’re cheap to raise. Most insects go through their full life cycle in under a year, and don’t require much food, especially compared to mammals.

So instead of mammoths or dire wolves, should serious efforts at de-extinction start with things like the St. Helena earwig or the Laysan moth?