Mammoth’s Future Will Have To Wait Failure To Recover Sperm Delays Effort To Recreate Species

Japanese and other scientists searched Siberian ice fields this month but failed to find the 10,000-year-old frozen sperm needed to recreate a woolly mammoth.

The research team, led by genetics specialist and veterinarian Kazufumi Goto, returned last week from a site along the Kolimaya River in western Siberia, where a number of mammoth fossils have been found buried under permafrost.

Goto, an assistant professor at Kagoshima University, said Friday the group uncovered part of a leg of a woolly mammoth and 34 other frozen fossils but no mammoth sperm. The fossils were left with a woolly mammoth institute in Russia.

In all, 34 researchers including British and Russian scientists took part in the search, which was funded partly by private Japanese businesses, he said.

The group wants to find fossilized mammoth sperm cells to see if the ancient DNA contained inside has remained intact. Woolly mammoths have been extinct for 10,000 years.

If the DNA is whole, the group hopes to use the cells to fertilize a live elephant and produce a half-elephant, half-mammoth offspring. Over several generations, a creature genetically close to the prehistoric one could be created, Goto said.

Researchers at Kagoshima University have fertilized a cow from sperm cells that had been frozen for seven years, he said.

The scientists hope to develop a way to bring extinct species back to life. The technique could also be used to preserve the genetic characteristics of existing animals hundreds of years into the future.

Goto said the group plans to continue the search in Siberia next year.

”(But) we’re ready to fly off any time if someone there finds a good sample,” he added.