Should we bring extinct animals back to life? The Jurassic Park fantasy we keep falling for

8 April 2025, 11:52 | Updated: 8 April 2025, 11:57

By Professor Mike Benton

Do we want to see extinct animals brought back to life?

The process is called ‘de-extinction’, effectively, it is claimed, reversing extinction.

These stories also have an optimistic tone. The announcement of a genetically modified Dire wolf raises the possibility again. Earlier reports had suggested the mammoth might be brought back. They could stalk the Siberian plains, bringing back the biodiversity that their dung, urine, and soil churning activity used to create.

De-extinction fans suggest that this might be a way for people to feel less guilty about the havoc we have wrought on wildlife. We killed off the dodo, the great auk, the passenger pigeon, and we are threatening thousands of species by encroaching on their natural habitats. Perhaps we can relax and leave it to the geneticists to apply their magic and bring all these species back to life after we have killed them off.

There are flaws though in this idea. If we pressed certain species out of existence by converting their natural habitats into farmland or polluting their air and water, we would still be threatening their re-invigorated genetic replacements. Perhaps, the optimists would argue, the reborn dodo or great auk could also be genetically engineered so it can live side by side with humans, a kind of urbanised replacement. Perhaps.

On the other hand, let’s be a little pessimistic. Think about Jurassic Park and all the subsequent movies. Dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and Mesozoic sea monsters roaming the land and ocean? We might be fascinated for a moment to see these ancient animals in the flesh, but then we would worry about what they might do as they stomped across London or Glasgow.

A second issue is that the genetically engineered extinct animals aren’t really that. The genetically engineered ‘dire wolf’ is not a reborn dire wolf, but a modern wolf with a gene inserted into its genetic code to give it white hair.

The hairy mice from a few weeks ago are modern mice with a gene inserted to give them long hair. The plan is to insert the same, or a similar, gene into the genome of a modern Asian elephant to give it a long coat. Coupled with a gene for being able to withstand the cold, you have a mammoth. Well, sort of.

The Colossal Company ‘is the de-extinction company.’ They are financing much of the work and their aim really is to bring back cold-loving, long-haired elephants to the Siberian steppe. Call them mammoths if you like, but they are really Asian elephants with a few tweaks.

Whether Mr Putin will agree or not is a moot point. Even Canada, a land with abundant frozen plains, might not be so quick to agree to this interesting wildlife experiment.

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Mike Benton OBE, FRS is Professor of Palaeontology at the University of Bristol, and his book 'Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves’ is out in paperback in July.

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