Do you remember the dodo? Not your fault if you don’t; the bird went extinct more than 350 years ago. Dodo is a large extinct flightless bird with a stout body, stumpy wings, a large head, and a heavy hooked bill. Thanks to billion-dollar startup Colossal Biosciences, humans will interact with the bird again. The Dallas-based company is also behind the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and now the dodo. De-extinction unicorn Colossal Biosciences has the support of the CIA, Paris Hilton, Chris Hemsworth, Tony Robbins, and the Winklevoss twins, all partners in the groundbreaking firm. With a cool $150 million in funding for the project, there certainly looks like there is no delaying the Dodo.
Professor Shapiro of the University of California, Santa Cruz explained, ‘’The way we can do this is to clone it, the same approach that was used to create Dolly the Sheep, but we don’t know how to do that with birds because of the intricacies of their reproductive pathways.’ She added: ‘So there needs to be another approach for birds, and this is one really fundamental technological hurdle in de-extinction. There are groups working on different approaches for doing that, and I have little doubt that we are going to get there but it is an additional hurdle for birds that we don’t have for mammals.’
Per Fast Company, Colossal CEO Ben Lamm estimated the first Dodo would be born before the mammoth calves, which it aims to birth in 2028 using an artificial womb. “Given the significantly shorter timeline of gestation of 30 days versus the 22 months in elephants, I think it is highly likely we see a dodo before we see the mammoth,” he said. Not everyone is in agreement with the ambitions and ideas of Colossal Biosciences. Experts have termed the project a distraction with unpredictable effects on the climate and ecosystems.
