'Jurassic Park' scientists close to bringing extinct beasts back from the dead

De-extinction company Colossal Biosciences is already on its way to bringing back long-dead species like the Tasmanian tiger. But they are also hunting for ancient DNA so they can revive entirely new species never found in the fossil record.

Professor Beth Shapiro, the company's chief science officer, said: "The past by its very nature is different from anything that exists today and so it is ripe for discoveries. We're like explorers, but instead of going to distant places on the planet, we're going to the distant past, and we don't really know what we're going to find."

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If dinosaurs are your thing then you've come to the right place

Experts have recently found fragments of DNA that date back two million years in Greenland, and it's possible that samples could be preserved from even further back in time. Among the DNA they have discovered is that of a horse-like animal from 700,000 years ago.

The Jurassic Park-style scientists think they can cherry-pick the best traits from DNA belonging to a species similar to a horse or donkey that lived 700,000 years ago.

And then they may be able to create new super-breeds better equipped for a world ravaged by climate change.Professor Shapiro added: "My own academic research lab has discovered a new species of Arctic equid that lived in North America some 700,000 years ago.

"It's not a horse, it's not a donkey, but it's something related to those lineages."We will discover things that the fossil record doesn't know about and hopefully we can use that information to resurrect traits in living species that perhaps can help them to adapt to wherever our future is going.

"The professor added resurrecting animals who lived during extreme hot and cold temperatures could unlock ways for today's animals and humans to adapt to Earth's looming climate changes.

She said: "Being able to reach far back into the past to a period of time where the climate was warmer than it is today can give us some better idea of how communities are organised or how different species have adapted to be able to thrive in different climates.

"It's not to say that species are necessarily going to stop going extinct altogether. But I certainly think that we should have a growing set of resources that we can use to stop species from becoming extinct, that are doing so because of things that we are doing, that people are doing to landscapes."

Colossal's experts hope to see animals made extinct millions of years ago roaming wild again by 2034.

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