Scientists Recreate Genome of a Bird That’s Been Extinct for 700 Years

These scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. In a breakthrough straight out of Jurassic Park, Harvard scientists have managed to recreate a nearly complete genome of the little bush moa—a bird that went extinct more than 700 years ago. The project brings scientists one step closer to being able to “de-extinct” species by inserting the genome of a disappeared species into the eggs of living species. The moa’s DNA was reconstructed from the toe bone of a specimen in a museum. Stewart Brand of conservation group Revive and Restore, which aims to bring species back from the dead such as the woolly mammoth, said: “De-extinction is coming, gradually and certainly. It will eventually be seen as just another form of reintroduction,” like bringing “wolves back to Yellowstone Park [and] beavers back to Sweden and Scotland.”