What extinct species would you clone if you were a billionaire?

And i'd also like to add: Archaeoindris!

 

Well from that list I would have to choose the Thylacine, just due to how unique it is. Otherwise, the elephant bird/moa would be tempting as well as Megladon

 

Great Auk! I mean, c'mon, they'd be great to have back. A lot of good choices there though - anything that was lost to human hunting would have to be my priority, and something fairly recent is more practical*.

*although clearly practicality is not a big issue for the purposes of this thread!

 

There is a lot of talk about bringing back the Wooly Mammoth. Scientists in China claiming they will do it in the next few years. I have to say it really inspires my imagination. I have to admit I hope they are successful. has there been any more progress with the Pyrenean ibex? it really boggles the mind that an extinct animal lived again briefly for just a few moments!

Realistically if I was a billionaire I'd be bringing back lynx wolves and bears to Britain and Ireland. I would buy a huge island, something like Mull and do a pilot scheme there.

 

It looks like there has been at least some semi-serious discussion of bring back beavers, lynx, and wolves. This article is from 2009. Does anybody know if the beaver and lynx reintroduction are going forward at all?

Should lynx, beavers and wolves be reintroduced to the British countryside? | Environment | The Guardian

 

In May 2009 Beavers where introduced back to Scotland as trial. Since then there has been success and there are currently 4 families of beavers successfully living within a fairly close area.
For more information about the project and pictures too, visit Official home of the Scottish Beaver Trial

Here in England there are a pair of beavers at Martin Mere Wildfowl and Wetland Trust. This is not exactly wild compared to the Scottish program, but still they are the first Beavers in England for around 500 years.

 

I think the Martin Mere beavers are fully captive, but there are 'semi-wild' (fenced in but in huge areas) beavers at the Cotswold Water Park, as I recall.

(and of course there have been plenty of captive beavers in England during those 500 years )

 

Paul Lister, a multi-millionaire had planned on introducing all of the above mentioned species into his estate in Scotland, However he met with extreme opposition, Surprisingly from walkers! there is a "right to roam" in Scotland which means land owners cannot fence their property. the other problem he had was the animals would be in, what would be, a large cage. that goes against zoo laws in the UK that predators cannot be fed live vertebrate prey. Mull would be ideal in my opinion, there is a tiny population of people (mostly conservationists anyway) and there is a large deer population. It would be a huge tourist draw to Scotland the proceeds of which could be channelled into other conservation projects.

 

Oh Yes!, I was maybe 'stretching the rules' a little by considering the Martin Mere ones as semi wild. I was unaware of Cotswold beavers, so will have a read about them later, thanks.

 

Hummm, that's a tough one. Of that list, I want to vote for the thyalcine, however, it would be very difficult to bring back one back with the current bio-technology. I would love to see Irish Elk, or Imperial Mammoth or True Auroch (as opposed to heck cattle!) or several score more whose tongue twisting names escape me at the momment. However, if all of the sudden I was showered with billions of dollars, I'd buy up land between isolated hotspots to be used as bio-corridors. Isolated and shrinking populations are why there are so many endangered species today.
Okeh, I'm waaaay off topic here. So, I finally decided what one animal I would save with my billions, if I had to limit to just one. The Giant (or Angolian) Sable Antelope

 

It is VERY hard to choose, because i have a strong interest in prehistoric creatures, as for what prehistoric animal i would clone there are too many species to list but if i had to choose i would choose something unusual that most people do not know about such as

Japanese Gazelle (Gazella praegaudryi)
Mexican horse (Equus conversidens)
Malagasy dwarf hippopotamus (Hippopotamus madagascariensis)

 

Guess.....

 

Personaly, if I could, I'd clone every species that humans caused to go Extinct. This includes the Megalania and the Woolly Mammoth. I'd start easy with the Pyrenean Ibex since that species has already been cloned out of Extinction but then died seven minutes later (so it has two extinction dates- 2000 and 2009) and then do the Thylacine and continue with the Woolly Mammoth since scientists have pretty much already done that and move on to more challenging ones.

 

Well the closest living relatives of the following species are

Japanese gazelle - Goitered gazelle
Mexican horse - Kiang
Malagasy dwarf hippo - Nile hippo

so those are the creatures i can get my DNA from

 

Chlidonias is right (as usual)

 

Im one of the few who have voted for the Passenger Pigeon.... I would love to see what impact they would have on the countryside again, if they could be bred up and released to form flocks of thousands/millions...

Im sure my lecture said something like at one point 2/3rd of American birds were P.pigeons? Anyway it was some stupidly high amount and it would be cool to see how they interact with all the ecosystems

 

Is it remotely possible that the species has survived in very secluded areas of their former range?

 

No at all. The birding population in North America is so adept at identifying birds, that a single P.P. would not go unnoticed.