Scientists Are Thinking About Cloning an Extinct, Mummified Bison
In 2022, Russian researchers found a young bison from over 8,000 years ago in Siberia. Now, they want to clone it.
The bison was likely no more than two years old when it died, and is a member of an extinct species.
Outside experts don't believe the DNA is preserved well enough for cloning.
Cloning extinct animals seems to be all the rage right now. From a woolly mammoth to an arctic wolf, scientists are continuously crafting ways to take DNA from known specimens of extinct animals and edit genes bring them back as closed creatures. Now, Russian researchers want in on the fun, and they plan to do so with a long-lost bison species, thanks to a 2022 find.
The newly discovered bison from an unknown extinct species is thought to have been around 1.5-2 years old when it died between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago, according to scientists at the Mammoth Museum of North-Eastern Federal University in Russia.
Found by locals in the summer of 2022 in the Verkhoyansk district of the Arctic Circle, the bison was preserved in the permafrost. The remains included a head, forelimbs, and part of the chest. Scientists conducted a necropsy—an autopsy for animals—and took samples of soft tissue, muscles, skin, wool, and even the brain.
Hwang Woo Sok, NEFU professor and director of the UAE Biotechnology Research Foundation, said in a news release that researchers are working with a unique find that could be cloned in the future thanks to selected materials. This news release was translated from Russian through the use of a free online translation service.
The bison necropsy allowed the extraction of samples and scans that the Russian researchers say will continue to be analyzed and kept in the museum freezer for future investigation. Cell research has already started, with the help of Korean colleagues, the university adds.
Though it is exciting to locate an extinct bison that has been well-preserved for thousands of years, one expert told Live Sciencethat there isn't enough here to make cloning a reality. "In my view, it is not going to be possible to clone extinct animals from tissues like this," Love Dalén, a paleogeneticist at Stockholm University tells Live Science. "To make cloning possible, one needs to find intact chromosomes, but what we see even in the best specimens is that each chromosome is fragmented into millions pf pieces."
In fact, Dalén thinks it is so improbable that researchers will find a fully intact chromosome from the carcass that you'd have a better chance of flipping a coin and landing "heads a thousand times in a row." That's not a rousing endorsement of the cloning potential.
The only plausible scenario for the successful cloning of the extinct Russian bison, Dalén says, comes from the tedious process of sequencing the bison's genome, thanks to the help of DNA from this specimen and potentially others, along with living bison.
Maybe researchers are on that same path, already saying they plan to find more of these extinct bison lodged in the frozen tundra. Maxim Cheprasov, head of the NEFU Mammoth Museum, said in a news release (translated with a free online translation tool) that researchers are planning to visit the site where other remains of fossil animals may be found this summer.
Get ready for a bison hunt unlike any other.
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