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The dodo bird was big, flightless, and pretty good eating. All that helps explain why it went extinct around 1662, just 150 years after European sailing ships found Mauritius, the island in the Indian Ocean where the bird once lived.
Now a US biotechnology company says it plans to bring the dodo back into existence. It’s the third species picked by Colossal Biosciences, of Austin, Texas, for what it calls a process of technological “de-extinction.” The company is also working on using large-scale genome engineering to morph modern elephants back into woolly mammoths and resurrect the Tasmanian tiger.
In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Ben Lamm, Colossal’s CEO, described a startup whose sizable scientific staff (including 41 PhD scientists), substantial funding, and eye-grabbing projects could have “far-reaching” consequences for animal conservation and human health.