News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Woolly mammoth will be back from extinction within 2 yrs say Harvard scientists. Parent comment

Re:Woolly mammoth will be back from extinction within 2 yrs ... by na85 on Saturday February 18, 2017 @10:53PM (#13678107)
The capability of being able to "respawn" extinct species is rather important, though, since we may be causing a mass extinction event via human-induced climate change. At some distant future date, it may be possible to revert much of the damage we're currently causing to the Earth.

It seems frivolous and silly, but I think this is actually very important research. You can't store species the way you can store seeds the way they're doing in Norway.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Woolly mammoth will be back from extinction within 2 yrs ... by frr149 on Saturday February 18, 2017 @11:33PM (#13678207)
I agree this is vital and fascinating, but maybe we should get the Elephant out of the danger zone.

I wonder if we'll ever bring back Neanderthals too.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Woolly mammoth will be back from extinction within 2 yrs ... by mc32 on Saturday February 18, 2017 @11:54PM (#13678258)
>I wonder if we'll ever bring back Neanderthals too.

No, not while we all live on one Earth. We can't even coexist peacefully with our same species, can you imagine having another apex species we'd see as direct competition not only to resources, but to our pre-eminence?

The alternative to bring them to life for scientific research would be an ethical non-starter.

[ Parent | on HN ]