- 2 hours ago
- #science
- #history
- #mammoth
- #discovery
- #nature
Ever wondered how a 23-ton chunk of Siberian permafrost, complete with mammoth tusks, ended up flying under a giant helicopter? Dive into this wild true story, from ancient Ice Age mysteries to the latest in de-extinction science! Want more epic tales from the past? Subscribe to our channel and let us know in the comments what blew your mind most in this adventure! #science #history #mammoth #discovery #nature
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kirtop-channel
0:00 - Introduction and Main Question
0:29 - Discovery of the Mammoth
2:21 - Identifying and Excavating the Mammoth
4:13 - Transporting the Mammoth Block
8:30 - Inside the Block and Scientific Revelations
12:03 - Mammoths and Humans in the Ice Age
17:34 - Other Permafrost Discoveries
19:51 - Cloning, Ethics, and Conclusion
We're now available on Spotify! Listen now https://open.spotify.com/show/03446o1UkrphwLdUErZj1B
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kirtop-channel
0:00 - Introduction and Main Question
0:29 - Discovery of the Mammoth
2:21 - Identifying and Excavating the Mammoth
4:13 - Transporting the Mammoth Block
8:30 - Inside the Block and Scientific Revelations
12:03 - Mammoths and Humans in the Ice Age
17:34 - Other Permafrost Discoveries
19:51 - Cloning, Ethics, and Conclusion
We're now available on Spotify! Listen now https://open.spotify.com/show/03446o1UkrphwLdUErZj1B
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Under this giant Mi-26 helicopter hangs 23 tons of frozen Siberian soil.
00:07Mammoth tusks are sticking out of the huge block,
00:10and it seems as if the scientists have taken it out of the permafrost intact.
00:13But when they started thawing the soil, a perfectly reasonable question arose.
00:18Is humanity ready for such an experiment?
00:21Hello, my friend. You're watching the Kirtop Channel.
00:24My name is Alexander, and today we'll figure out what was really behind this crazy scene.
00:30Tusks in the Permafrost.
00:31It all started two years earlier, in the summer of 1997.
00:36On the shore of Bolshaya Balaknya in Timir,
00:39the Zharkov family of Dolgan reindeer herders noticed a tusk sticking right out of the frozen ground.
00:45Then they found a second one nearby.
00:47Then it became clear that there weren't just two huge tusks underground.
00:51There were other mammoth remains nearby as well.
00:53By the way, there's an amusing mix-up here.
00:55On the internet, it's often written that the mammoth was found by a nine-year-old.
00:58Nine-year-old Simeon Zharkov.
01:00But in scientific papers, it just mentions the Zharkov family.
01:03And in a major report by Outside, the discovery is attributed to the adult reindeer herder,
01:08Janati Zharkov.
01:10He was driving the herd to a new pasture, noticed the tusks,
01:13and later traded them to the French researcher Bernard Bigou for tea, coffee, and gasoline.
01:19So the story about the nine-year-old boy just seemed more appealing and spread better.
01:22But what was much more important was what remained underground.
01:25When they started excavating the site, they found part of the skeleton next to the skull,
01:30a piece of skin about a meter by a meter, and several kilograms of wool.
01:34And that changes everything.
01:36Mammoth bones are found regularly in Siberia, but skin and wool after 20,000 years.
01:42That's a completely different story.
01:44Moreover, the Sarkovs said that you could still smell the animal at the site.
01:47It sounds almost unbelievable.
01:49But that's exactly what's mentioned in the specialized literature about the discovery.
01:53When Bigou arrived there in 1998, part of the skull had already been damaged during the summer thaw.
02:01And that's when it became clear that simply digging further and pulling out the remains piece by piece was a
02:07very bad idea.
02:08If more soft tissue had been preserved underground, it could have been lost literally during the excavation itself.
02:14And that's why the team decided to do something with the mammoth that almost no one had done before.
02:21Who was it?
02:22By this point, it was already clear that what lay underground wasn't just a few tissues and bones.
02:27But now it was necessary to figure out exactly who had been found.
02:32It was an adult male woolly mammoth.
02:34Based on the condition of the molars, researchers estimated his age to be 47 to 49 years old.
02:40Mammoth's teeth changed several times during their lifetime, almost like modern elephants.
02:45And that's why, by how worn out the last set is, you can determine the animal's age quite accurately.
02:51So in other words, we were looking at a mammoth that was no longer young, but an adult male who
02:56had lived quite a long life.
02:58Radiocarbon analysis showed the specimen to be about 20,380 years old.
03:04This means that he lived during the last ice age, long before the first cities and agricultural civilizations.
03:10But this age by itself was not unique.
03:13Mammoth bones from that time are regularly found in Siberia.
03:16However, the condition of some of the remains was much more interesting, especially the tusks.
03:21One of them turned out to be almost 3 meters long and weighed about 47 kilograms.
03:27And by the way, these are the very tusks that would later stick out of the famous 23-ton block
03:34in the photograph.
03:35But the most valuable thing was not on the outside.
03:38Under the permafrost, there was skin, fur, and other body parts that could have been ruined if they had started
03:45to thaw right on the spot.
03:47And that's when the team had a problem.
03:50The mammoth was found.
03:52But a regular excavation could have destroyed exactly what made this find so interesting.
03:57So they decided to stop the usual excavation and come up with another way to preserve the discovery.
04:04Why did they take the soil?
04:06And this is where the very story begins.
04:09The one that made this whole operation so crazy.
04:13Usually, when mammoth bones are found, they are simply carefully dug out, cleaned, and taken away.
04:19But here, doing that was dangerous.
04:21While the remains were lying in the permafrost, they were in a natural freezer that had been working for more
04:27than 20,000 years.
04:28As soon as they started actively thawing the ground right on the spot, the skin, fur, and soft tissues could
04:34begin to deteriorate almost immediately.
04:37And the problem wasn't just with the mammoth itself.
04:39The researchers also wanted to preserve the soil around it.
04:42They used ground-penetrating radar on site to understand what was hidden deeper.
04:47And it revealed anomalies that could have been extensions of the remains.
04:51So digging blindly was risky.
04:53They could have uncovered something important too aggressively and ruined the find even before it could be properly studied.
05:00Before this, people often worked with mammoths in permafrost much less delicately.
05:04They could heat the ground, pour hot water on it, thaw large areas, or simply chop around the bones.
05:10For an ordinary skeleton, this might still work.
05:13But if there was skin, fur, and other tissues nearby, such methods could seriously damage them.
05:19So the team decided not to take the find apart on site.
05:22Instead, they cut out a huge section of permafrost entirely, along with the soil, ice, mammoth remains, and everything that
05:29was around it.
05:30As a result, they ended up with a block about 13.5 cubic meters in volume and weighing 23 tons.
05:36And here, it's important not to get confused.
05:39It wasn't the mammoth that weighed 23 tons.
05:41That was the weight of the entire chunk of frozen ground they decided to take with them.
05:45The most interesting thing is that at that moment, no one yet knew for sure how much of the animal
05:51itself was preserved inside.
05:52Maybe most of the carcass was still there.
05:54Maybe just a part of it.
05:56Some bones and tissues.
05:58The ground-penetrating radar showed that there was something underground.
06:01But it could only really be seen properly after it was delivered.
06:04So basically, the scientists decided to first remove 23 tons of tundra,
06:08and only then figure out what exactly they had taken.
06:11And now a new problem has appeared.
06:13All of this was located in a place where there was no proper road, no truck,
06:17and nothing at all that could easily transport such a weight.
06:20There was only one option left.
06:22To lift it all into the air.
06:25How did they transport the find?
06:27By the fall of 1999, a huge block of permafrost had been cut out around the mammoth.
06:34And now the simplest thing remained.
06:36Somehow, to transport 23 tons out of the tundra,
06:39where there was neither a proper road, nor a crane, nor a truck
06:43that could simply be brought up to the excavation site.
06:45That's why the team chose a rather radical option.
06:48The MI-26 helicopter was supposed to fly in for the find,
06:53one of the highest capacity helicopters in the world.
06:55On October 17, this chunk of frozen earth was secured with cables and lifted into the air.
07:00And here, the scale of the whole undertaking becomes especially clear.
07:04The MI-26 usually transported heavy machinery and industrial equipment.
07:09But this time, hanging beneath it was a fragment of the Siberian tundra
07:13with the remains of an animal that died about 20,000 years ago.
07:17It was about 250 kilometers to Katanga.
07:20That's exactly where the entire cargo was sent.
07:23And it wasn't taken to an ordinary laboratory.
07:26Near the village, they specifically prepared an ice cave
07:29where the temperature stayed around minus 11 to minus 15 degrees all year round.
07:34So instead of thawing the mammoth right on the spot and constantly rushing,
07:39they simply moved it from the natural permafrost to another cold environment.
07:43And this was not only for preservation.
07:46Now researchers could work for as long as they needed.
07:49They could open a small area, take samples, see what was preserved,
07:54and not worry that everything would start to deteriorate after a few warm days.
07:58In essence, they brought back not only the mammoth,
08:01but also a part of the place where it had lain for all those thousands of years.
08:06Before the actual lift, there was another rather unusual episode.
08:10The local Dolgens asked for a ritual to be performed before finally disturbing the remains.
08:14According to the expedition's account,
08:16at first it was suggested to sacrifice a white reindeer,
08:19but Bernard Buig refused and left a few coins in the excavation site instead.
08:23After that, the work continued.
08:25And then that very shot appeared.
08:27Third, the Mi-26 is flying over the tundra.
08:31Hanging beneath it is a huge frozen block,
08:34and on the side, two long tusks are sticking out.
08:37This is the very photograph that was later shown in newspapers, magazines, and documentaries.
08:42Why is the photo a bit misleading?
08:44The tusks were found back in 1997,
08:47long before the Mi-26 helicopter arrived in the tundra.
08:53They were carefully separated from the remains and taken away from the discovery site.
08:57So by the time of the famous lifting,
08:59they were no longer sticking out of the permafrost in the position we see in the photograph.
09:04Before the flight, the tusks were brought back and attached outside on the frozen block.
09:08So the shot itself is real.
09:10And the tusks are real too.
09:12They really belonged to the Yarkovsky mammoth.
09:14But the photograph slightly changes our perception of the discovery.
09:17It seems as if the mammoth was found exactly like that,
09:21and simply cut out of the ground whole.
09:23In reality, this is already a block prepared for transportation,
09:25and the tusks were attached to it separately.
09:28And I actually like that the real story doesn't become worse because of this.
09:32On the contrary, it's even better.
09:33Because if you remove all those impressive tusks,
09:36what remains is a huge chunk of earth weighing 23 tons.
09:40At first glance, it doesn't sound as impressive anymore.
09:43But the scientists were ready to drag it across the tundra,
09:46and they were transporting it hundreds of kilometers,
09:49not just for a pretty photo.
09:50They still didn't know exactly what was preserved inside.
09:53And that was truly interesting.
09:55Because after it was delivered to Katanga,
09:57they began to open the block very slowly, in small sections.
10:01And instead of a whole mammoth,
10:03which one might have expected from the famous shot,
10:05there turned out to be something completely different.
10:08What did they find inside?
10:10There was no dramatic opening in Katanga.
10:13The researchers didn't break open the whole block
10:16and pull out the mammoth in a single day.
10:18On the contrary, they started to take it apart very slowly, in small sections.
10:22In fact, one of the methods looked almost funny.
10:24Against the backdrop of this whole operation with 23 tons and a big helicopter,
10:29they thawed the permafrost with an ordinary household hair dryer.
10:34This way, they could gradually remove the top layer and not damage what was inside.
10:38The fur appeared pretty quickly, and not just a few random hairs,
10:42but a well-preserved undercoat up to 12 centimeters long.
10:45From it, researchers were even able to determine that the mammoth was wearing its winter coat.
10:50That means it died during the cold season.
10:52Or at least, it hadn't yet fully shed its winter coat.
10:56And then something happened that viewers usually don't expect after seeing the famous photograph.
11:01Inside, there wasn't an entire mammoth lying there,
11:03carefully frozen in the ground with its skin, head, and internal organs.
11:07They found bones, skin, fur, and part of the skeleton.
11:10But a huge part of that entire 23-ton mass turned out to be just ordinary frozen soil.
11:17And here, it's very easy to think that the whole operation was a bit excessive.
11:22A helicopter, hundreds of kilometers, an ice cave,
11:25and all for a few parts of a skeleton and a huge amount of soil.
11:29But that's exactly what turned out to be the most interesting part.
11:32Because the team didn't take the soil by accident in the first place,
11:35Along with the mammoth, it preserves something that usually gets completely lost during excavations.
11:40Remnants of plants, pollen, moss, and other traces of the environment
11:44in which this animal lived about 20,000 years ago.
11:47So, inside the block, it wasn't just the mammoth.
11:51A piece of its world was preserved there.
11:53And in the end, the very soil that at first seemed like unnecessary weight
11:57began to tell us about the past just as much as the bones themselves.
12:01The World Around the Mammoth
12:02When the researchers started taking samples around the remains,
12:05it turned out that this soil was literally
12:08packed with traces of ancient vegetation.
12:11They found pollen from grasses and wormwood in it,
12:13remains of mosses, traces of poppy, and other plants.
12:17That is, from just a few handfuls of soil,
12:19it was possible to fairly accurately reconstruct
12:22what grew around the mammoth at about the time when it lived here.
12:26And this is where the familiar picture of the Ice Age starts to break down a bit.
12:30When you hear about mammoths,
12:31you usually imagine snow, ice, and an almost empty white plain.
12:35But most of the time,
12:36they didn't live surrounded by endless snowdrifts at all.
12:39A vast area of Siberia was occupied by the so-called Mammoth Steppe.
12:43It was cold and dry,
12:45but still covered with grasses and other low vegetation.
12:47There was enough food there not only for mammoths.
12:50Horses, reindeer, bison, woolly rhinoceroses,
12:54and other large herbivores live nearby.
12:56It creates quite a strange picture.
12:58Today, Tymir seems like a place where a large herbivore
13:01would have a hard time finding enough food for most of the year.
13:04But 20,000 years ago,
13:06there was an ecosystem of giant animals here.
13:10And it was the soil around the Yarkovsky mammoth
13:13that helped us see just how different that world was from today.
13:18But then the samples gave us another surprise.
13:21Not everything found near the mammoth was the same age.
13:24Some organic remains turned out to be much older than the animal itself,
13:28up to about 40 or 45,000 years old.
13:31Others, on the contrary, turned out to be much younger.
13:34That's why it's simply impossible to reconstruct a single,
13:37perfect snapshot of the moment of its death based on that soil.
13:41What did the tusk reveal?
13:43The mammoth itself left researchers another source of information.
13:47It's tusks.
13:48Daniel Fisher from the University of Michigan studied them.
13:51He has been studying the lives of mammoths for many years,
13:54using exactly this method.
13:56The thing is, a tusk grows almost throughout the animal's entire life.
14:00New layers appear one after another.
14:02And inside, something like a very long record remains.
14:06Moreover, Fisher was able to distinguish not only the annual layers,
14:10the finer stripes corresponded to weeks,
14:12and the thinnest ones formed almost daily.
14:15In the Yarkovsky mammoth, a small section at the base of the left tusk
14:18preserved about the last four years of its life.
14:21The animal died 20,000 years ago.
14:23And scientists were literally able to go through those years,
14:26layer by layer.
14:27By analyzing the chemical composition of the tusk,
14:30they saw the change of seasons in several periods when the mammoth lacked food.
14:34But they didn't find anything resembling a long period of starvation before death.
14:38It turns out to be quite strange.
14:40We can look into the last years of its life,
14:43almost season by season.
14:44But we still don't know exactly what killed it.
14:47And for now, we'll leave the Yarkovsky mammoth aside.
14:50Because it was far from the only mammoth,
14:53which was preserved so well.
14:55And some finds look as if the animal didn't die 20,000 years ago,
15:00but literally yesterday.
15:02When people lived nearby,
15:04the Yarkovsky mammoth died about 20,000 years ago.
15:08But the strangest thing about that time is
15:10that mammoths weren't some kind of rare animals back then.
15:14From the distant wilderness,
15:16people really lived alongside them.
15:18They saw their herds.
15:19And they constantly used what was left of them.
15:22In fact,
15:23you don't even have to go far from Siberia for this.
15:25On the Yana River,
15:27far beyond the Arctic Circle,
15:28archaeologists found a human settlement about 32,000 years old.
15:32And there was a huge amount of mammoth bone and tusks.
15:35They made spearheads from tusks,
15:37tools,
15:38and other things,
15:39which,
15:39in a region almost without trees,
15:41were especially useful.
15:42But people didn't just collect what they found.
15:44At the same Yana site,
15:46they found mammoth bones with weapon damage.
15:48In one shoulder blade,
15:50a fragment of a stone spearhead was preserved.
15:52In another bone,
15:53there is a mark from a projectile weapon strike.
15:56This is already quite direct evidence.
15:58That people really did hunt mammoths.
16:00Moreover,
16:01researchers believe that they did not do this all the time.
16:04Sometimes the main prize might not even have been the meat,
16:06but the huge tusks,
16:08from which they later made tools.
16:10And here is where the relationship between people and mammoths comes in.
16:13It becomes completely unusual.
16:15A few thousand years later,
16:17in what is now Ukraine,
16:19settlements appeared where mammoth bones were literally used as building material.
16:23In Mezorich,
16:24archaeologists found several structures.
16:25Around them lay skulls,
16:27jaws,
16:28shoulder blades,
16:29and other huge mammoth bones.
16:30They used them to assemble the basic framework of the structures.
16:34And most likely,
16:35they stretched hides over the top.
16:37New dating of one of these structures
16:38puts it at about 18,000 years ago.
16:41A few thousand years later,
16:42in another part of Eurasia,
16:44people were able to sit by the fire inside their homes.
16:47The frame was made entirely from mammoth bones.
16:49And here,
16:50I wouldn't paint a picture
16:51as if people necessarily killed dozens of mammoths
16:54just to build a house.
16:56Archaeologists still argue about where exactly all these bones came from.
16:59Some could have been collected from animals that had already died.
17:02But the very fact itself
17:03doesn't become any less strange because of this.
17:06For an Ice Age person,
17:07the mammoth could,
17:08at the same time,
17:09be a source of meat,
17:11raw material for tools,
17:12tusks,
17:13and even material for housing.
17:14But sometimes from the permafrost.
17:16They would find not just separate bones and tusks,
17:19but almost whole animals
17:20with skin,
17:22fur,
17:23and internal organs.
17:24And even remnants of the last meal in the stomach.
17:27And some of these finds have been preserved much better
17:29than the Yarkovsky mammoth.
17:31What else has the permafrost preserved?
17:33And the Yarkovsky mammoth is far from being the record holder
17:35in terms of preservation.
17:37In 2007,
17:39in Yamal,
17:40they found a baby mammoth named Laiuba.
17:42She was only about a month old.
17:43And after 40,000 years,
17:46her skin and trunk were preserved.
17:49Her eyes and internal organs,
17:51even the contents of her digestive system,
17:53remained intact.
17:54That's why scientists were able to understand
17:56what she ate before she died.
17:58And the mammoth named Yuka,
18:00found in Yakutia in 2010,
18:02something even more unusual was preserved.
18:05The brain.
18:06Nerve tissue is usually one of the first things to decompose.
18:09But here,
18:10researchers were able to see the brain membranes,
18:12blood vessels,
18:13and some internal structures.
18:14This is the first such well-preserved brain
18:16of a woolly mammoth
18:17that has been studied in detail.
18:19But permafrost preserves far more than just mammoths.
18:22In Canada,
18:23a wolf pup named Jure was found.
18:25He is about 57,000 years old.
18:28He was preserved almost completely
18:30with fur,
18:31skin,
18:31and soft tissues.
18:32Moreover,
18:33based on the chemical composition of the bones,
18:35researchers came to an unexpected conclusion.
18:37A significant part of his diet consisted of fish,
18:40most likely salmon.
18:41In Siberia,
18:42almost complete cave lion cubs have been found.
18:44One of them,
18:45Sparta,
18:46lay in the permafrost for about 28,000 years.
18:49Fur,
18:50whiskers,
18:50skin,
18:51teeth,
18:52everything was preserved so well
18:53that the animal's appearance can be studied
18:55not just by its skeleton,
18:57but almost directly.
18:58Cave lions,
18:59meanwhile,
19:00were a separate lineage,
19:01different from modern lions.
19:02And in the Batagay crater,
19:04they found a foal
19:05about 42,000 years old.
19:07Its skin,
19:08tail,
19:08and hooves were preserved
19:09and its fur.
19:10But the most unexpected thing
19:12was discovered during the autopsy.
19:13In the vessels and body cavities,
19:15there was still liquid blood.
19:17Scientists tried more than 20 times
19:19to find living cells in the tissues,
19:22but without success.
19:23And the discoveries continue.
19:24In 2024,
19:26the study of the frozen woolly rhinoceros
19:29revealed a detail,
19:31which was previously known mainly from cave paintings.
19:34The animal really did have a large, fat hump on its withers.
19:38So, after tens of thousands of years,
19:41permafrost sometimes even lets us check
19:43how accurately Ice Age people drew animals on cave walls.
19:47And after all this,
19:48the question about cloning arises.
19:50It already arises on its own.
19:53If we have skin,
19:55organs,
19:55a brain,
19:56and even liquid blood of animals
19:58that are tens of thousands of years old,
20:00why can't we just take a single cell
20:03and bring them back to life yet?
20:05Is it possible to bring back the mammoth?
20:07At first glance,
20:08it seems like the solution is almost ready.
20:10If,
20:11after tens of thousands of years,
20:13we still have skin,
20:14muscles,
20:15and internal organs,
20:16and even blood,
20:17we just need to find the right cell
20:19and repeat what was once done
20:20with Dolly,
20:21the sheep.
20:22And what's most strange is that one day,
20:24scientists really almost pulled this off
20:26with an already extinct animal
20:28in the year 2000.
20:30The last female Pyrenean ibex,
20:32named Celia,
20:33died.
20:34Her cells were preserved in advance.
20:36And a few years later,
20:37a clone was created from them.
20:39The baby was born alive,
20:40but lived only a few minutes
20:42due to a serious lung defect.
20:44Nevertheless,
20:45it was the first case,
20:47when an extinct animal
20:48was actually brought back to life
20:49for a short time.
20:50With mammoths,
20:52there's one unpleasant difference.
20:53Celia had properly preserved cells.
20:55No one has found such cells in mammoths yet,
20:57even skin that looks perfect.
20:59After 40,000 years,
21:01it may be perfectly preserved on the outside,
21:03but inside,
21:05the DNA is already broken
21:06into a huge number of fragments.
21:08That's why taking a cell
21:09from the Yarkovsky mammoth
21:11and making an exact copy of it
21:13is impossible today.
21:14And that's exactly why
21:15modern projects
21:16have taken a different path.
21:17Colossal Biosciences
21:19isn't trying to clone
21:20a specific mammoth.
21:21The company takes cells
21:22from an Asian elephant
21:23and changes the genes
21:24related to mammoth traits,
21:25like fur and fat metabolism.
21:27Ear shape and cold resistance.
21:30In 2025,
21:31they showed the so-called
21:33woolly mice.
21:34They changed several genes
21:36like that,
21:36so that the animals
21:37would get long fur
21:39and other traits
21:40related to cold adaptation.
21:42It looks funny.
21:43But the purpose of the project
21:44was serious,
21:45to check if it's possible
21:47to make several necessary changes
21:49work in a single living organism.
21:51And then Colossal caused
21:52an even bigger stir
21:53with the so-called dire wolves.
21:55In 2025,
21:57the company showed
21:58three white wolf pups,
22:00Romulus,
22:00Remus,
22:01and Calisi.
22:02Calisi.
22:03They announced
22:04that they had basically succeeded
22:05to bring back
22:06an extinct species.
22:07But many scientists
22:08immediately disagreed with this.
22:10In reality,
22:11the researchers took
22:12cells from a modern gray wolf,
22:14and they changed
22:15about two dozen DNA segments
22:17to get a few traits
22:18characteristic
22:18of its extinct relative.
22:20As a result,
22:21they got an animal
22:22that outwardly resembles
22:23the ancient dire wolves.
22:25But genetically,
22:26they're still heavily modified
22:27gray wolves.
22:28And this debate
22:30directly concerns the mammoth.
22:31If you take the Asian elephant,
22:33change dozens of genes,
22:35give it thick fur,
22:36small ears,
22:38and resistance to cold.
22:39At what point
22:40does it stop being an elephant
22:42and become a mammoth?
22:43But genetics
22:44is only half the problem.
22:46You also need to get
22:47a viable embryo
22:48and then somehow carry it
22:50for almost 22 months.
22:52Use female Asian elephants
22:54for numerous experiments,
22:55which are already endangered.
22:57The idea is quite controversial.
22:59That's why Colossal
23:01is working in parallel
23:02on artificial womb technologies.
23:04But no one has grown
23:05a whole elephant yet,
23:07let alone a mammoth.
23:08So if we ever get to see one,
23:10the first mammoth
23:11of the 21st century,
23:12it will almost certainly not
23:13be a resurrected
23:14Yarkovsky mammoth.
23:15We will be looking
23:16at a completely new animal,
23:18a modern elephant
23:19whose genome
23:20has been altered
23:21to bring back
23:22some of the traits
23:23of the woolly mammoth.
23:24And here another question arises.
23:26How humane is it
23:28to do any of this at all?
23:29To get one viable offspring,
23:31it may take dozens
23:33or even hundreds
23:34of unsuccessful embryos,
23:36pregnancies,
23:36and experiments.
23:38And the ones participating
23:39in this won't be
23:41extinct mammoths,
23:42but living Asian elephants,
23:44which themselves
23:45are endangered.
23:46That's why the debate
23:47about bringing back
23:48the mammoth today
23:49is not just about
23:51whether it's technically possible,
23:52but also about whether
23:54it's worth doing at all.
23:56The story that began
23:57with a photograph,
23:58where two giant tusks
24:00were sticking out
24:01of a huge block
24:01eventually led
24:03to the question.
24:04A question that
24:04until recently
24:05would have sounded
24:06like science fiction.
24:07Will we one day
24:08be able to see
24:09a real living mammoth?
24:11And most importantly,
24:12is it even worth
24:13doing at all?
24:14Well, if you like this video,
24:16give it a like
24:17and subscribe to the channel.
24:19Hit the bell to find out
24:20when a new video comes out.
24:22Because the new video
24:23is coming soon.
Comments