Scientists To Resurrect Tasmanian Tiger From The Dead After 100 Years

Scientists Plan To Resurrect The Tasmanian Tiger From The Dead 100 Years After It Went Extinct

Scientists have revealed plans to bring back the Tasmanian Tiger, almost 100 years after it went extinct.

The Tasmanian Tiger, also known as the tyhlacine, roamed the Earth for millions of years before being wiped out by human hunting in the 1930s.

Now, Colossal Biosciences, a startup based in Dallas, Texas, has announced plans to start the ‘de-extinction’ of the species, using stem cell technology.

 

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‘Bringing back the thylacine will not only return the iconic species to the world, but has the potential to re-balance the Tasmanian and broader Australian ecosystems, which have suffered biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation since the loss of the predator earlier this century,’ Colossal Biosciences explained. It has long been thought that this was due to competition with humans and dogs.

The remaining population – isolated on the island of Tasmania – was hunted to extinction in the early 20th century.

The last known individual died at Hobart Zoo in 1936. The scientists plan to take stem cells from the fat-tailed dunnart – a living species with similar DNA – and turn them into ‘thylacine’ cells using gene editing technologies.

New ‘marsupial assisted reproductive technologies’ will then be needed to use the stem cells to make an embryo. Once an embryo is created, it would then be transferred into either an artificial womb, or into a dunnart surrogate to gestate.