De-Extinction Craze

wooly_mammoth_modelDe-extinction is thought to have first appeared – as a word – in The Source of Magic (1979) science fiction book by Piers Anthony and caught the attention of Hollywood. Using ancient cloned dinosaur DNA, popular ER television scriptwriter Michael Crichton then captivated the imagination of American film producer Steven Spielberg with the 1990 Jurassic Park novel igniting the de-extinction craze.

In 2013, de-extinction was announced to be a science, at least according to journalist Ben Macintyre writing in the Times (London, March 8). Not everyone agrees, though. “I will argue,” said Beth Shapiro of the University of California, Santa Cruz, in her new book How to Clone a Mammoth, the Science of De-Extinction, “that the present focus on bringing back particular species… is misguided” – scientifically.
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