Hello Woolly Mammoths?

Behaviour isn't pure though.
It is ever changing and as the world changes behaviour changes as well - the mammoths might be genetically pure; thus having all the potential of behaviour of the past.However how they'd choose and discover and learn how to behave toward would be different. Heck even "pure" mammoths would have changed behaviours through to modern times.

 

This is incorrect. Clones have an average lifespan the same as "normal" individuals. One study in Japan demonstrated this in spectacular fashion by cloning mice to the 30th generation. Clone from a clone from a clone from a clone etc. Even generation 30 were healthy individuals.

Of course you're welcome to your opinion. With due respect, however, putting forward lousy arguments without understanding the biology or goals of this research wastes everyone's time.

@overread: Once again, they wouldn't be "genetically pure".

 

Don't take it personally I'm trying to point towards the potential flows in this hypothetical experiment, and the success of the clone differs by the source of cloning and the techniques used. I have looked into cloning before, and when I did nuclear transfer was the most common use, which in it's own doesn't work well all the time. Give me a source to correct me so I can strengthen/change my views before calling my argument useless and passing me off as an idiot.

 

A source on what? Nuclear transfer? Cloning? Mammoths? Perhaps you should ask before posting your opinions, rather than after. And perhaps you should include citations in your own posts before demanding them of others.

 

Oh, and for what it's worth, there's a difference between passing someone off as an idiot and suggesting they don't know what they're talking about on this occasion. "With due respect" is still (a little) respectful.

 

All of what you say is true, but my issue is more about the practical application than on whether they are "true" mammoths or not (I now realize that my post didn't reflect that, so that's my bad).

Behavior doesn't appear from thin air; it must develop from something. If a mammoth is raised by elephants, it will largely adopt the social behavior of elephants, but is that behavior useful in the mammoth's environment? If a mammoth is raised by humans, we will have to decide exactly what behaviors are beneficial or detrimental for them to have, but do we have the knowledge base to accurately make such judgments? Learned behavior is essentially a body of knowledge and technique that builds on itself over time to enhance the fitness of individuals or groups; that accumulation for mammoths is gone, and I have doubts about whether we can replicate a system like that from scratch.

 

Sorry I just felt like your statement was an insult when I first saw it. I am no expert, and need to be shown I'm wrong to learn some things. Can you send me a link to the experiments proving that they will be able to clone something that survives as I am interested.

In the mean time here is an article that talks about the other side of the argument.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5865590/no-we-wont-be-able-to-clone-a-woolly-mammoth-in-the-next-five-years

 

A fair assumption, hence why I tried to be a little more polite in my clarification. I'm travelling at the moment, with limited access to the internet, no access to my notes, and better things to be doing, but drop me a PM in a months' time and I'll send you some references.

As the original article recognizes, the likelihood of a mammoth being born within two years is effectively nil. Grand statements breed big grants, unfortunately. One last thing: the article you posted is six years old, so I guess the author was right.

 

Bringing The Woolly Mammoth Back To Life Might Not Be Such A Good Idea After All | The Huffington Post
Here is an interesting article talking about scenarios with budget, as well as negatives and benefits to the revival of the mammoth.

 

I don't understand why they died out globally. Mammoth steppe still persists on the mainland of Asia (Altai-Saiyan). Home to saga and a conservative race/subspecies of reindeer - archaic dental traits suggest local neanderthal admixture was visible in the modern humans up till the Neolithic too. Something very Pleistocene still about that area though the Mammoth as a living animal is unknown to the present inhabitants.

Oddly cryptozoologists and folklorists have misattributed oral lore about Mammoth tusks to experiences with Elasmotherium. The one horn of the "cow" was the mammoths tusk and in art the Mammoth is depicted as a rhinoceros not as an elephant. For some reason as Mongoloid "Neobaikalians" moved north they remembered the rhinoceros from their homeland but not the elephant. Despite frozen elephants in permafrost the tusks became part of their folklore about aquatic cattle. By this time the elephants were extinct in Siberia.

In time it became the ki-lin of Chinese lore as the tusks travelled south. Despite the presence of Elephas maximus in China the Chinese did not make the connection to elephants, either.

I never did buy into overhunting myself: they were too similar to Elephas and Loxodonta in other realms besides NZ, Madagascar and especially oceanic island fauna are a poor analogy. There was long coexistence of mammoths and H. sapiens in Europe and Palearctic Asia, probably it was related to the decline of the mammoth steppe yet as I said suitable mammoth biome never disappeared in S Siberia. It's very odd.

As for the island mammoths surviving late: this was not as surprising as people think given Sellers sea cow was such a relict at the time of its discovery and extinction: for relict mammoth on places like Wrangel, overhunting is at least much more plausible. Would be interesting to know if local people there remember mammoths - if not then it was probably climate.

 

Mammoth on the mainland most likely went extinct due to hunting by humans. There was a recent scientific article proving this by numbers, unfortunately I cannot find it again.

Science has never been a pure economical thing. It was always driven by all sorts of reasons including pure curiosity.

A clever way to pay for this would be to handle it like the chinese handle there giant pandas. It would easily generate lots of money and could pay for itself.

One point which hasn't been mentioned in detail yet, are the ethical aspects of raising a social animal in isolation (You would have to start with one). Today it is thought unethical too keep an elephant alone...

About the lost culture: I think, if you put a group of mammoth into the right environment they would relearn everything to survive pretty quickly. A lot is still in the genes.To hunt plants is not that difficult

 

Overkill vs climate theories goes round in circles. But mammoths and even mastodon were more like Asiatic and African elephants than moas or giant lemurs. Which is what overkill theory is modelled upon.

Globally overkill theory fails to accept that hindgut fermentation and browsing habit each increased probability of extinction in the terminal Pleistocene. Climate based theory does but cannot predict its scale at the turn of one particular interracial.

 

Would you mind including references when posting things like this? It would help me understand the point you're making and whether there's any substance to it.

Mammoth Steppe did disappear at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. By the time the treeline receded again 4kya, continental mammoths had been extirpated.

See: Pattern of extinction of the woolly mammoth in Beringia : Nature Communications

Most recent papers I've read concluded that mammoths were probably an example of both: fluctuating population size was closely linked to climate and habitat change, but hunting pressure may have sealed the deal in some areas. As a general rule, this isn't about "proving" one way or the other, but identifying the most parsimonious scenario.

I'm not sure whether you're joking, but any individual resulting from this research would have neither the social environment nor genetics of a true mammoth.

Not really. Evidence accrues, methods become more sophisticated, and the debate progresses (even if the question stays the same). We know far more about the causes of Late Pleistocene extinctions today than we did two decades ago. This is why I don't have much time for overread's argument.

Again, not really. Models have been developed for all the major faunas and many continental species (including mammoths).

 

Can't source exact papers atm but all are on academia.edu; the paper about Siberian concepts of the mammoth as a unicorn water bull is about philology/ethnozoology and includes the ki-lin and the narwhal; there has been a bit fairly recently about Altai-Saiyan UP populations following the Malta aDNA, and they were odd - genetically Caucasian (or "Western Eurasian"), with a hyper-Mongoloid/Uralic depressed nose root and wierd persistant frequency of "archaic" (rather than clearly Eurodont or Sinodont) dental traits. It's easy to search the physical anthropology stuff but unfortunately I can't remember the name of the ethnozoological paper.

Yes computer models exist for many things but the result depends what data is punched in: I even saw a computer model of Noah's flood, convincing no? People think a computer makes something extra tangible. They are wrong. It just makes calculations faster. No computer program is immune from human flaw because humans enter the data etc.

As I said the jury is out. Odd neanderthals and cave bears died out as soon as modern humans appear not at the end of the Pleistocene; and probably outcompeted both as an omnivore with the full UP toolkit. With the later Palearctic extinctions its a bit harder. A long coexistence suddenly ends with all Palearctic hindgut fermenters larger than Equus disappearing as on most continents: some other Eurasian cold climate fauna too. Yet elephants are smart and adaptable: and the presence of large animals itself keeps down tree growth, keeping habitats open for grazing. And how many genes turned a naked elephant into a woolly one? I don't know; narratives require too many assumptions about 1)mammoths and 2)UP people.

Mmm... "the debate progresses (even if the question stays the same)" - yes that's why it hasn't progressed IMO. The question remains, instead of being resolved and leading to new questions. Like stagnation: data in data out, nothing really concrete.

 

It would be nice to see an illustrated Palearctic book of the Pleistocene in accordance with the ongoing paleoart revolution: Witton illustrated lately a scavenging Gigantopithecus engaging in kleptoparasitism from Homo erectus.

Have you ever seen baby mammoths drawn playing and rolling in mud? Nor have I. Accurate reconsiderations of Palorchestes? No one tries it. Have an accurate Macrauchenia or a flanged sabrecat made it into a printed book yet?

 

I was not joking, but already some steps ahead. Totally agree with you that the first bastards will be no mammoth yet. But if true mammoth are created at some point and you have enough of them to form a proper social group including natural reproduction and put them into the right environment it will happen.

 

Coelodonta might be easier assuming no strong social behaviour. (Strong effects of culture are limited to smarter and very social animals.)

 

Dying woolly mammoths were in ‘genetic meltdown’

 

Welcome to the Future Range of the Woolly Mammoth

A good read about Pleistoscene Park, although it focuses on the human story rather than the science.