Extinct Animals That Come Back

For extinct animals like the mastodon that have been gone for hundreds or even thousands of years its much harder.

Extinct animals that come back. Although there are problems still to be solved the process is gradually becoming more feasible. Certain species such as the Javan Elephant have gone from extinct to rediscovered and back again several times over. Bees have long been talked about as a species that may go extinct relatively soon.

The last time anyone recorded a sighting of the Somali elephant shrew was almost 50 years ago after which it was assumed to have become extinct. The quagga is in fact a subspecies of the Plains Zebra Equus quagga. Before there were cattle as we know them today there were aurochs which were cowlike creatures bigger than elephants.

The Quagga Project started in 1987 is an attempt to bring them back from extinction. In preparation for de-extinction The Long Now Foundation has listed several species that meet the criteria for coming back to life including the below. It would involve recovering fragments of badly degraded DNA from ancient specimens and patching those fragments into the DNA of a close living relative.

In a first step toward resurrecting the mammoth researchers from Russia and South Korea are working to bring back another extinct animal the Lena. Camelops is an extinct genus of a camel that once roamed western North America where it disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene about 10000 years ago. Five extinct animals that come back from the dead Variola better known in modern times as smallpox was an infectious disease that plagued humanity throughout recorded his.

Variola better known in modern times as smallpox was an infectious disease that plagued humanity throughout recorded his. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Camelops extinction was part of a larger North American die-off in which native horses mastodons and other camelids also died out - possibly from global climate change and hunting by the Clovis people.

Still those animals that are no longer extinct give us some hope for the future. The Caspian Tiger was officially declared extinct in the 1970s. There are lots of good reasons to bring back extinct animals.