Mammoths have repeatedly appeared in permafrost. What warnings and impacts does this bring to humans?

According to media reports, several gold miners recently dug up a baby mammoth mummy while digging in the Klondike permafrost in the Yukon region of northwestern Canada. After expert analysis, they believed that this mammoth was more than 30,000 years old and was the most complete mammoth remains preserved to date.

In fact, it is not uncommon for mammoths to be dug out from the permafrost. Since 2016, a large number of mammoth remains and fossils have been discovered in many places. In 2018, the most complete mammoth carcass to date was unearthed in the permafrost of Siberia, Russia, with complete brain tissue and body hair.

According to experts, the mammoth was between 6 and 9 years old when it died, and has been sleeping in the frozen soil for 39,000 years. So, is it a good thing or a bad thing that mammoths are constantly being unearthed from the frozen soil? What impact will it have on the future? Let's discuss it together.

History of the Mammoth

The mammoth, also known as the woolly mammoth or woolly mammoth, belongs to the family Elephantidae, class Mammalia, subclass Eutheria, order Proboscidea, suborder Euproboscidea. It is one of the largest mammals that have ever lived on land. It belongs to the same order as modern elephants, but belongs to a different branch.

Mammoths lived in the cold climate of the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene, also known as the Diluvian or Glacial Period, was a cold era from 2.588 million years ago to 11,700 years ago. Mammoths were the product of this era, appearing 1.8 million years ago and living throughout Eurasia and northern North America.

As the climate warmed, mammoths became extinct 10,000 years ago, and the last batch of Siberian mammoths became extinct around 2000 BC. Therefore, the extinction of mammoths is considered to be a symbol of the end of the glacial cold era.

Mammoths are huge and fat, about 5 meters long, 3 meters tall, with incisors about 1.5 meters long, and generally weigh 6 to 8 tons, with the heaviest reaching 12 tons. In order to adapt to the cold, mammoths have thick fur and a rich layer of subcutaneous fat that can be up to 9 centimeters thick. Mammoths are vegetarian animals that feed on grass, beans, shrubs, and tree bark.

Mammoths are social animals with females as leaders. When males mature, they live alone or in loose small groups. The gestation period is as long as 22 months, and only one offspring is born per litter. The survival rate is very low, so the growth rate and population development are very slow.

The mammoths lived during the period when humans evolved from apes to humans, so mammoths were considered to be the partners of human evolution. However, as humans improved their hunting abilities, this partnership completely disintegrated, and became a relationship of hunter and hunted. People hunted more and more mammoths for food and warmth, and later for their ivory.

Therefore, the disappearance of mammoths, in addition to climate warming, slow reproduction, lack of communication between populations, genetic defects caused by inbreeding and other reasons, the increasing killing in the process of human evolution also contributed to the extinction of this huge species.

So, is it possible to revive this species now? Throughout human evolution, we have been the culprit or accomplice of many animals’ extinction. Now that human technology has advanced, we want to revive some extinct ancient creatures. But so far, there has not been a single successful case of resurrecting an ancient creature. So is there a plan and hope for the resurrection of mammoths? Yes, there is.

Scientists predict that there may be 15 million mammoth remains buried under the permafrost in Siberia. Due to the long-term extremely low temperature, most of the mammoth's body can be preserved intact. So far, dozens of mammoth remains have been found. On some mammoth skeletons, soft tissues and even complete tendons are still attached. In 2014, the world's first complete mammoth brain was found in Yakutia.

To this end, Russia spent US$5.9 million to build a cloning center in 2018, planning to revive mammoths through cloning technology.

Some scientists believe that in theory, it is possible to revive mammoths, but the process is complicated and difficult. An experiment by Kei Miyamoto's team at Kinki University in Japan seems to be ahead of the curve. They implanted cell nuclei extracted from mammoth remains into mouse eggs and achieved regeneration, that is, they obtained active mammoth embryos.

The research results were published in the electronic version of the British scientific journal Scientific Reports on March 11, 2019. The specimen used was a mammoth that had been sleeping in the Siberian permafrost for 28,000 years. Bone marrow and muscle tissue were extracted from its body, and the genetic information was compared with that of African elephants to confirm the mammoth's unique DNA and proteins. The cell nucleus was then extracted and implanted into mouse eggs.

This is a huge breakthrough, but it is only the first step. There are still many difficulties to overcome in order to truly revive the mammoth. Miyamoto said that the first step is to be able to progress to cell division, and then implant the embryo into the mother. According to the theory, if the mammoth embryo is implanted into the body of an Asian elephant for development, it is possible to produce a mammoth.

But this process is not done overnight, and there may be many reasons such as immune rejection that lead to death. The pregnancy period is as long as 22 months, and if there is any mistake, you have to start all over again, and several years will pass. In addition, Asian elephants are also endangered species, and the approval procedures for experiments on them are complicated.

Therefore, we only see a little hope of resurrecting mammoths. In the science fiction movie "Jurassic Park", scientists extracted dinosaur genes from mosquito blood in amber and resurrected dinosaurs. This kind of story is impossible in reality.

Because the half-life of DNA is 521 years, it is difficult to read after 1.5 million years, and all the bonds are completely destroyed after 6.8 million years. Therefore, it is impossible for the genes of dinosaurs that have been extinct for 65 million years to be preserved to this day. The extinction of mammoths lasted only 4,000 years, and the earliest excavated corpses are within 40,000 years, so there is hope for their resurrection.

But when or whether we can actually see the tall and mighty living mammoth remains to be seen.

One after another

The warning and impact of the mammoth discovery

The discovery of long-extinct fossil samples is of course a good thing for scientists who study paleontology, and it is of great significance for humans to understand the past and face the future. However, as more and more secrets of permafrost are discovered, many scientists are alert.

Decades ago, scientists discovered the trend of global warming. Scientific research shows that the Earth's temperature has been maintained at a relatively balanced level for thousands of years, which has given humans the opportunity to develop smoothly. If this balance is broken, the Earth's ecology will face a catastrophe of extinction.

Prior to this, since the Phanerozoic Eon, when the Cambrian explosion of life occurred, the Earth's ecology has suffered five mass extinction events, with 80-95% of species disappearing each time. The most recent mass extinction event was the Cretaceous extinction event 65 million years ago, when the dinosaur family and many other organisms disappeared. Research has found that we have now entered the sixth mass extinction event.

The cause of this mass extinction is the rise in the average temperature of the earth, and the culprit is human willfulness. Tests have found that since the industrialization of mankind, greenhouse gas emissions have become increasingly severe, and the global average temperature has risen by 1°C. Scientific modeling believes that a rise in the global average temperature of 3°C is a threshold. When this critical point is reached, the earth's climate self-regulation system will collapse and extreme climate disasters will be irreversible.

The result of the disaster is that the ice caps melt, the sea level rises, all coastal cities are flooded, and 65% of the world's population is displaced; devastating extreme weather occurs frequently, droughts and floods occur frequently, the oases of the past turn into deserts, and the deserts of the past turn into swamps; humans are forced to migrate, hunger and plague sweep the world, the biological chain and food chain are broken, and most organisms and humans cannot escape the fate of extinction.

At present, signs of global disaster have emerged frequently: polar ice caps are melting, tropical rainforests are disappearing, forest fires are continuing all over the world, dead water areas in the ocean are expanding, coral reefs are dying, fresh water resources are decreasing, and catastrophic weather is occurring frequently.

To this end, scientists from around the world jointly issued the first open letter in 1992; 25 years later, in 2017, they jointly issued the second open letter, warning all mankind to change their bad habits, adopt a low-carbon and environmentally friendly approach, and protect and restore the ecology. Otherwise, we don’t have much time left!

The continuous excavation of mammoths from the permafrost also warns us from another perspective that the earth is indeed warming and the critical point is approaching!

In addition to the above series of disasters, scientists have another concern: as the climate warms and the ice sheets and permafrost melt, some unknown viruses and bacteria that were frozen in ancient times will be released. These ancient viruses will be like European rabbits arriving in Australia in modern times, bringing unpredictable and huge disasters to people.

In 2016, an anthrax outbreak occurred in the Yamal Peninsula of Russia, infecting a large number of residents and killing a 12-year-old boy. According to research, a reindeer died of anthrax 75 years ago, and the bodies frozen in the permafrost were exposed due to melting, spreading anthrax.

If ancient viruses and pathogens are exposed, the consequences will be even more disastrous. Many biologists and geneticists believe that as long as the conditions are right, some extinct viruses can survive for tens of thousands of years or even longer. In 2014, researchers extracted a 30,000-year-old giant virus from the Siberian permafrost and revived it in the laboratory and made it contagious.

Many of these ancient viruses are unknown or extinct in modern times. Once they are transmitted to humans, they are likely to cause a plague that is much more serious than the COVID-19 pandemic. This is like opening Pandora's box and releasing the devil into the world.

As a result, many people have called on local governments to strictly control and reduce these excavations, especially the wanton destruction of permafrost by some gold diggers.

Based on this, many scientists and social figures believe that instead of spending a lot of time and money to revive the mammoth, it is better to use these resources and costs to increase the protection and restoration of the current ecology. Because this kind of revival may not bring any benefits to human life and the future. In a state where existing species are accelerating extinction, even if the mammoth is resurrected, can it be guaranteed that it will not become extinct again?

Therefore, protecting and restoring the current environment so that the ecology and human beings can have a better future is the right way. What do you think about this? Welcome to discuss, thank you for reading.

The copyright of Space-Time Communication is original. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.