Scientists Are Attempting To Clone The Extinct 40,000-Year-Old Foal That Was Recently Discovered In Siberia
With the recent discovery in Siberia of a 40,000-year-old Paleolithic foal, scientists are now attempting to clone the extinct animal and bring its species back from the dead.
As the Inquisitr recently reported, the ancient baby horse was found buried in the permafrost of a Siberian crater in a place that is referred to as the “Mouth of Hell.” The foal was discovered to be in such pristine condition that it at first appeared that it was still sleeping soundly instead of having been buried deep beneath the ground for 40,000 years.
According to the Daily Mail, a team of scientists from Russia and South Korea believe if there are still living cells inside the extinct foal, it may actually be possible to resurrect this species of Lenskaya horse. This, they feel, is just the “first step” in attempting to clone the woolly mammoth.
After scientists cleansed the Paleolithic foal of the ancient dirt that it had been immersed in, they discovered the baby horse to have a charcoal mane and tail, along with a stripe that stretched along the foal’s spine. And, perhaps best of all, the 40,000-year-old horse had perfectly preserved muscle tissues, as Dr Semyon Grigoriev explained.
“Fortunately, the animal’s muscle tissues were undamaged and well preserved, so we managed to get samples from this unique find for biotechnology research.”
Could this be the return of the WOOLLY MAMMOTH? Scientists take cells from an extinct 40,000-year-old frozen foal perfectly preserved in Siberian permafrost in a bid to clone its species back to life https://t.co/7X8QOt4IiC via @MailOnline
— To?y D'El?? (@TonyDElia_) September 5, 2018
Professor Hwang Woo Suk, who specializes in cloning, has left Seoul to discover whether the Paleolithic foal still has any living cells left, and noted, “If we manage to find a cell, then we will do our best to clone the unique animal.”
If the scientists do find living cells in the baby horse, they will find a mare from a species of horse that is most similar to this one so that it can serve as a surrogate for the cloned horse, as The Siberian Times report.
“We are trying to make a primary culture using this baby horse, which was discovered a few weeks ago. If we get live cells from this ancient baby horse, it is a wonderful promise to people in terms of cloning. We have so many live horses. We can get a very good choice of eggs from these female horses. And after making the cloned embryo with this baby horse, we can easily transport it to the surrogate mother. There are the types of horses that are very close with the ancient one.”
For those who would like to see the 40,000 year old Siberian horse cloned, the good news is that it will only take one living cell to make the attempt, according to Professor Woo Suk. And if the cloning is successful, scientists might be able to make the leap and try cloning a woolly mammoth by using an elephant as a surrogate.
“So if we find only one live cell, we can clone this ancient horse. If we have one live cell, we can multiply it and get as many embryos as we need. Actually if we get the living cell from the ancient tissue it will be unique by itself, because no one managed to do this before. And if we manage to clone the horse – it will be the first step to cloning the mammoth. It will help us to work out the technology.”
Scientists will now be working in Yakutsk to discover whether there are any living cells still salvageable from the extinct 40,000-year-old foal that was discovered in Siberia so that the species can be cloned.
