Could de-extincting the dodo help struggling species? - a podcast by NPR

As a leading expert on paleogenomics, Beth Shapiro has been hearing the same question ever since she started working on ancient DNA: "The only question that we consistently were asked was, how close are we to bringing a mammoth back to life?"

In the second part of our conversation (listen to yesterday's episode), Beth tells Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott that actually cloning a mammoth is probably not going to happen.

"But there are technologies that will allow us to resurrect extinct traits, to move bits and pieces of genes that might be adapted to a large animal like an elephant living in the Arctic."

That is what companies like Colossal Biosciences and Revive and Restore are trying to do, with Beth's help. And she is leading the effort on another iconic extinct species, the dodo.

In today's episode, how Beth Shapiro's initial work mapping the dodo genome laid the groundwork to bring back a version of it from extinction, and how the knowledge scientists gain from de-extinction could help protect species under threat now.

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