Woolly Mammoth resurrection - I'll believe it when I see it . . .

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

I thought that there would be a problem with oxygen levels or some sh1t

Naw that's only with dinosaurs as the O2 levels back then were much higher than today.

1ZRed wrote: »

There is less than 5% neanderthal DNA in us, that's largely due to us splitting from the same gene pool so we have DNA in common, on either side.

There's also doubt that neanderthals interbred with us.

That doubt is highly dubious. For a start there are clear well dated sites of Neandertal populations that are more recent than that study(if you could call it that) mentions. There was almost certainly a period of time when Neandertal and modern human populations overlapped in the same area. Many thousands of years of time. That's in Europe alone. never mind in the middle east 100-90 Kya where we were living cheek by jowl for thousands of years and where the genetic "clock" suggests that's where we got jiggy with each other, not in later Europe(that said I'll put money down we got jiggy in Europe too).

As for the less than 5%/shared gene pool part? Couple of problems with that. 1) the genetic clock shows the insertion of genes came much later after the shared history event. 300,000 years later. 2) Otzi the iceman's DNA show nearly 7% Neandertal because the bloke was closer to the event by a few thousand years 3) and the one that kills it stone dead, modern humans went through a genetic bottleneck in Africa where we were reduced to tens of thousands in number. So all humans today are related to that small African group. In which case that research has to be wrong in it's conclusions, because we should all then have Neandertal DNA if it was shared from before or we all shouldn't if it wasn't, but we do and we vary in that. Never mind Denisovan DNA from another human subspecies in Asia. Some modern populations have over 10% of their genes in them.

If they were brought back they would not be homosapien or "human", as they are a different subspecies.

They would be very close to us in genetics. We, modern humans, are quite 'inbred" for a species. EG Chimp populations living just ten miles apart have more genetic diversity than all humans throughout the world. Adding in Neandertal and Denisovan folks(and likely other undiscovered cousins. There's at least one to be found in Africa I reckon) would expand our diversity but not by that much. IMHO they would be full members of our "human" species. Sub sub species at a push.

Would they be like us? Harder call. If we did bring back a Neandertal, he or she would come to us cultureless. We'd learn nothing about how they would have been back in the day. They would be brought up in a modern human environment. I strongly suspect that in such an environment they'd end up as pretty much another human, just like you and me. They might be less "tame", less domesticated in nature compared to modern humans. Maybe a comparison might be drawn comparing the diffs between a wolf and a domestic dog. Basically the same species but with a number of behavioral differences. They might be more "wolf like". I'd say similar if we brought back an earlier version of Homo Sapiens from say 100kya. Back then we don't look too much different to others like Neandertals. Big brow ridges and all. Culturally we weren't so different either. That came much later.

Even so take the cultures of clearly modern folks and compare them to Neandertals. If all we had of native Australians were their stone tools and we'd lost all their complex art and stories, we'd likely say Neandertals were more advanced culturally, in stone tool use anyway. Take modern Andaman islanders, the isolated tribal ones can't control fire. They store fire as burning embers from existing fires/lightning strikes etc, but can't actually make it. Neandertals could, they could even cook up compound glues that require some tricky chemistry. They also carved complex wooden items that Andamans don't(we're only scratching the surface on that side).

TL;DR? I'd regard Neandertal folks if they were still around as people, just like you and me, or anyone else around today.

Da Shins Kelly wrote: »

There is no sure way of knowing exactly how to reintroduce a long-extinct species to our current ecosystems. The planet has changed a lot since the time of the mammoth.

Well not so much as we might imagine considering the last population of mammoths died out only three and a half thousand years ago. A time when Newgrange was already not far off two thousand years old. Their last hold out was an island of the coast of Siberia. If you wanted to you could create a "jurassic park" type island environment and they'd probably do well.

That said the value of it is the thing and like you that's where I'd have issue with cloning a mammoth. I'm not so stuck on the "evolution killed them off" notion. After all many recently extinct animals were killed off by hunting and habitat destruction they couldn't adapt to. Me I'd prefer to see the thylacine back for example. The dodo or the great Auk another. The falklands wolf, ditto for the Japanese wolf would be more. Passenger pigeons spring to mind too. Before that list animals on the brink now we should be fighting for. And it's a big problem when species like the Yangtze dolphin are probably already gone though The fungus scything through the amphibian populations in the Americas is another real crying fcuking shame and I'd prefer to see the money spent on fighting that than bringing back a one off circus freak.