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"Hair is a better source of ancient DNA than bone or muscle, a new study involving woolly mammoth hair suggests.

"The main problem with things like bone is that it contains real DNA from the source, but also a load of DNA that is undesirable," said study team member Tom Gilbert of the University of Copenhagen. "For example, when a mammoth dies and the body starts putrefying, bacteria gets all throughout the body. Later, as it's buried in the ground, soil bacteria get into it." "

http://www.livescience.com/animals/070927_mammoth_hair.html

Now we're one step closer to cloning a woolly mammoth. Better build a sturdy pen!


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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What would we do with a Woolly Mammoth really? I heard that the Japanese were looking to clone a mammoth so that they could do what ever they liked to the animals for food and nobody could post a legitimate complaint becasue they would be slaughtering an already extinct animal, but other than that is there a real purpose for cloning an extinct animal?

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Perhaps they could be re-introduced to their former range in the US, if they could be established as a species again. It would be a one of a kind specimen for a zoo, as well. A real tourist attraction?


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Originally Posted By: Amaranth Rose II
Perhaps they could be re-introduced to their former range in the US


Alas, the cattlemen in the Central and Western US won't even share the grass with a miserable little prairie dog! So I'm pretty sure elephants would be right out.

http://www.kxmc.com/News/159754.asp


Mike B in OKlahoma

"Never confuse with malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

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Couldn't reintroducing a species have disastrous effects? I know that in Vermont we were once supposedly the oldest rain forest in the world, but the introduction of the steam engine caused 98% of all of Vermont's trees to be cut down. The forests have been replanted but many of the threes which used to thrive here are not resistant to many diseases which the trees before were, so they cannot live well here.

Somebody in the Vermont Legislature heard that porcupines from the south will eat the diseased wood from these trees, so they brought the porcupine up here. Unfortunately porcupines had no natural predators in Vermont so they thrived and became a nuisance because they would eat the diseased wood, but only after eating the healthy wood first. To counter this nuisance the Vermont Legislature opted to introduce the one animal which ate porcupines and that was the fisher. The Fisher did eat porcupines but according to myth only after eating everything else. There were stories of fishers eating household cats, dogs, and even attacking farmers on their tractors, so Vermont put a large bounty on fisher pelts.

Now that the fisher is close to extinction, the state of Vermont is reintroducing them because they have found many of these stories false and that the fisher was actually doing a good job keeping the porcupine population in check. With all that said, none of these problems would have occurred if people were smart enough not to cut down all the trees and to replant at least one tree for every cut down, but when you introduce a new animal into an ecology its presence could have disastrous effects.

Last edited by Rallem; 09/30/07 08:05 PM.
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Here in Australia someone thought that to introduce rabbits would be a great idea, so tasty and so cuddly! Then the interesting Prickly Pear was introduced as a house plant! And the fox to provide something to hunt (those koalas are so damn SLOW)! Then camels were used in the desert and set free when the rail came, likewise horses! And starlings and sparrows to Europeanise this hostile landscape! But the crowning glory in the 'let's introduce things into this pristine country where it will have no predators' was the jolly Cane Toad, surely one of the most loathsome creatures on the planet! So I suggest giving a home to the Woolly Mammoth here in Australia, it could do no more harm than these and all the other introduced disasters.

(In all honesty I must own up to one introduced species that many think is the worst of the lot, the domestic house cat- but I love my fluffy moggie and try not to count the birds he kills.)

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I went to British Columbia and someone there decided to introduce a plant from australia, and it is crowding out the native flora of Canada.

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Yes Rallem- that would pobably be the eucalyptus which seems to be grown all over the world now. It's a wonderful tree with lots of different varieties and it will grow just about anywhere. It is popular in many places as a result, but its leaves are full of oil and they burn easily and rapidly, hence our bushfires. In fact some varieties need fire to successfully germinate their seeds. It will also spread rapidly and reach weed status unless planted carefully as it grows very quickly indeed. This is all good in Oz where the tree has developed in harmony with its native conditions, not so good elsewhere though.

Last edited by Ellis; 10/02/07 06:05 AM. Reason: spelling!
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I was told that there are more than 250 species. Ellis wrote:

"This is all good in Oz where the tree has developed in harmony with its native conditions"

The really interesting thing is that eucalyptus became much more widespread after humans arrived. The theory is that "its native conditions" are the result of human activity, Aboriginal burning. Eucalyptus evidently used to be present in NZ until ice ages pushed their ecological range too far north for them to survive. Been reintroduced but not a problem here.

Ellis. Your earlier post reminded me of the song, "I Know an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly". Similar things happened here.

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Yes we should be singing that song, it would be funny---but----

I think that is true about there being more eucalypts around now. One reason is that the eucalypts of Western Australia are spectacular in every way. They are large trees with graceful and often colourful trunks, and they have a variety of gorgeous blossom and gum nuts. As a result they are planted all over Oz. However the conditions are much the same wherever you go in Australia, and these trees are valued and they seem not to go feral. You can contrast them with the imported plants from Africa (a country somewhat similar ecologically). They thrive here and plants such as the boneseed, a yellow daisy bush, very pretty but very invasive, become pests.


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