Book in Brief: How to Clone a Mammoth

“Will there ever be a real Jurassic Park?” I’ve heard this question more times than I can count. The answer is always “No“. Aside from the problem of getting a viable clone to develop inside a bird egg – one that scientists haven’t cracked yet – DNA’s postmortem decay happens too fast to give us any hope of saying “Bingo! Dino DNA!” someday. But just because it won’t work for Tyrannosaurus doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for other forms of life. In How to Clone a Mammoth, ancient DNA expert Beth Shapiro offers a thrilling tour of the science that might – might – recreate lost worlds from the not-too-distant past.

The book’s title is a bit of a bait-and-switch. On the very first page, Shapiro explains that for long-extinct organisms such as “the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the mammoth – cloning is not a viable option.” If at all, these organisms are going to come back to us piecemeal as revived genetic material expressed in hybrid creatures that may, or may not, look like the lost species. And this cuts to the core of what de-extinction is really all about.

From a purist’s perspective, extinction really is forever. It’s impossible to recreate lost species exactly as they were, down to every last gene and quirk of behavior. But with a broader definition of de-extinction – creating organisms that can fill vacant ecological roles – an elephant with a touch of mammoth trundling around the Arctic steppe would count as what Shapiro dubs an unextinct species. This is the goal of de-extinction efforts – not to recreate extinct species down to the finest detail, but to generate organisms that rehabilitate ecosystems. Not so much resurrection as carefully-crafted reinvention focused on ecosystem-scale repair.

As a researcher who is shaping this field, Shapiro is the perfect guide to the ongoing discussion about de-extinction. While many news items and conference presentations have focused on the technology required to recreate extinct life, Shapiro carefully considers every step along the journey to de-extinction, from choosing a species to revive to making sure they don’t become extinct all over again. As Shapiro says herself, she’s a realist rather than a cynic, and her finely-honed prose cuts through the hype that has clouded the debate around whether or not we should be striving to recreate lost species when so many living species are hanging on by the barest thread.

In fact, Shapiro uses the tension between those advocating for the return of extinct species and critics who argue that the effort would be better spent saving today’s imperiled organisms to propose a third option that has barely been discussed. Whether or not proxy mammoths, dodos, or sabercats come back, exploring such possibilities may give conservationists new tools to manage and assist threatened species and ecosystems. We’re already carrying out conservation triage on the weak and wounded, so why not use every tool at our disposal to sustain – and perhaps even improve – what we’re already managing by hand? Or, as Shapiro writes near the end of the book, “De-extinction is a process that allows us to actively create a future that is really better than today, not just one that is less bad than what we anticipate.”

Will genetically-modified pseudo-mammoths or passenger-ish pigeons be the first symbols of a new age in conservation? That’s still unclear. But even if we never see shaggy elephants or the shade cast by immense pigeon flocks, de-extinction research already underway has the potential to both tell us about the past and provide us with new tools to decide the future shape of nature. Whether you’re all for de-extinction or against it, Shapiro’s sharp, witty, and impeccably-argued book is essential for informing those who will decide what life will become.