Mammoth comeback is possible say experts

Published on Tuesday 15 August 2006 01:54

THE woolly mammoth could be brought back from extinction using sperm extracted from animals encased in ice.

Researchers have already found that sperm taken from the frozen reproductive organs of dead mice can produce viable offspring.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they suggest that sperm from frozen mammoths could be used to bring the extinct creatures back to life.

The idea would be to inject mammoth sperm, assuming it could be retrieved, into the eggs of female elephants.

A successful pregnancy would produce the closest thing possible to a living woolly mammoth, the result of crossing one of the extinct animals with a close modern-day relative.

Sperm is routinely frozen for IVF treatment, but has to be carefully stored and protected.

The new research showed it is possible simply to freeze whole male mice, or their reproductive organs, and use the sperm extracted from them to produce offspring.

In one test, sperm were retrieved from the bodies of mice that had been kept frozen at minus 20C for 15 years.

Some of the sperm successfully fertilised eggs after being injected into them.

It was not known how long viable sperm could be frozen in animal bodies, the researchers said. But the findings raised the intriguing prospect of resurrecting extinct animals that had remained frozen since the ice age.