Bits and Bites from Around the World > Can the Dodo Bird be resurrected from extinction?

 

‘De-extinction’ of the dodo: Company to try resurrecting long-extinct bird

By Sarah Do Couto  Global News

Posted December 1, 2023 12:15 pm

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FILE - A 19th century illustration of a dodo. The company Colossal Biosciences announced in

November 2023 it would attempt to de-extinct the iconic bird and return the species to Mauritius. 

Getty Images via Andrew Howe

Not too unlike the plot of the movie Jurassic Park, a team of well-funded scientists are attempting to bring the extinct dodo back to life.

Last month, the billion-dollar genetics company Colossal Biosciences announced it would be partnering with a wildlife charity in Mauritius to try and bring one of the world’s most famously extinct creatures to the region again.

In a press release, the Dallas-based company said it would work closely with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation and the country’s government to return the dodo to its East African home, where it went extinct in 1681.

The company called the dodo  an “iconic bird and a symbol of human-caused extinction.”

The dodo, which was bigger than an average turkey, disappeared due to hunting by humans (it had no other predators) and the introduction of new animals to the region, making the dodo unable to compete in the wild.

Colossal Biosciences said the project will hopefully allow for improved conservation efforts for other already endangered animals in Mauritius. As part of their effort to revive and reinstate the dodo, the company and local wildlife officials said they will also remove invasive species, revegetate the region and increase community awareness.

The “genetic rescue” of Mauritius’ already vulnerable pink pigeon (Nesoenas mayeri) is a specific goal within the dodo “de-extinction” project. The pink pigeon was downgraded from being an endangered species in 2018, though the species still faces a difficult future as a result of inbreeding, disease and habitat loss. According to Colossal Biosciences, there are roughly 500 pink pigeons left in Mauritius.

By making room for the flightless dodo, conservationists and scientists from Colossal Biosciences hope they’ll save others like the pink pigeon from potentially facing the same fate.

A pink pigeon. Mauritius Wildlife Foundation

How will they make the dodo ‘de-extinct’?

As expected, it’s no easy feat to resurrect an extinct animal.

In their attempt to bring the dodo back, scientists will use genomic editing technology. The bird’s full genome has already been sequenced by Beth Shapiro, the lead paleo-geneticist at Colossal Biosciences.

To try and produce the dodo, the company said they will use interspecies surrogacy, namely with genetically modified chickens. According to the company, in theory, a chicken which has the hybridized primordial germ cells (or PGCs) of a dodo injected into its embryo may be able to produce offspring that resembles the extinct bird.

For its part, Mauritian Wildlife Foundation will build models for long-term management of the dodo to ensure it will thrive and be self-sustainable after its reintroduction to the wild.

It is not yet clear when Colossal Biosciences will be able to “de-extinct” the dodo — though company executives have fielded snide remarks about their projects for years now, including endless Jurassic Park comparisons.

“We’ve heard all of those comments over the years,” Ben Lamm, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told the Dallas Morning News. “But we have an opportunity to do it for good reasons because when you remove an animal from an ecosystem, that ecological void is felt. We’re not out to build things that shouldn’t exist. We’re focused on undoing the sins of the past and bringing back species to their native homes that mankind had a role in its demise.”

The dodo is not the first creature to be chosen by Colossal Biosciences for a potential second life. The company earlier announced it would also attempt to revive the Tasmanian tiger and woolly mammoth, both of which remain extinct.

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Newly-Discovered ‘Monster Planet’ Upends Theories on Astronomy

Don't you just love it when scientific theory is proven to be wrong? Paleontology, archaeology, and astronomy are all based on assumptions and educated guesses which often prove to be completely false. Now, how planets form goes back to the drawing boards.

© warwick.ac.uk

A team of researchers has discovered a gas giant roughly the size of Jupiter orbiting a companion star smaller than our own sun. The discovery has upended current thinking on the limitations of planet formation in the universe.

NGTS-1b is the largest planet relative to its star ever discovered in the universe and dispels pre-existing theories that average-sized stars could not form gas giant planets of such immense size. It’s also the first planet discovered by the the Next-Generation Transit Survey observatory which hunts for new planets as they traverse their stars.

"The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us – such massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars. This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form,” said Daniel Bayliss, the lead author of the research said in the University's press release.

I'm not sure 'wisdom' is the appropriate word here.

“Our challenge is to now find out how common these types of planets are in the galaxy, and with the new NGTS facility we are well-placed to do just that,” he added.

NGTS-1b is 600 light years away from us and is a gas giant roughly the same size as Jupiter but orbits a star only half the size of our own sun in terms of radius and mass. It’s as hot as Jupiter (530 degrees Celsius, 986 Fahrenheit)  and at least as large but possesses approximately 20 percent less dense. (density?)

However, it lies at just three percent the distance between Earth and our sun, meaning a year on the planet lasts just 2.6 days. The planet orbits a red M-dwarf star, the most common type of star in the universe, which leads researchers to believe there may be far more gas giants waiting to be found.

“NGTS-1b was difficult to find, despite being a monster of a planet, because its parent star is small and faint. Small stars are actually the most common in the universe, so it is possible that there are many of these giant planets waiting to found,” said Professor Peter Wheatley, head of the NGTS team.

“Having worked for almost a decade to develop the NGTS telescope array, it is thrilling to see it picking out new and unexpected types of planets. I'm looking forward to seeing what other kinds of exciting new planets we can turn up,” Wheatley said.

The observatory monitors the night sky and detects red light emanated by stars using ultra-sensitive cameras. In this particular instance, the system detected a break in starlight every 2.6 days. The team then tracked the planet's orbit around the star, allowing them to calculate the size, position and mass of NGTS-1b by measuring the radial velocity or the anomalies in its orbit due to variations in the planet's gravity.