In the six million years that humans and our ancestors have walked the Earth, woolly mammoths might as well have vanished yesterday: The very last of their species, Mammuthus primigenius, died out about 4,000 years ago, when the remaining survivors underwent a “genetic meltdown” during their isolation on Wrangel Island. Modern humans had seen these beasts, hunted them, made homes from their bones, and more for thousands of years, only to have the last of the shaggy beasts perish in isolation off the coast of Siberia.
Perhaps it’s the fact that our species has had such a long connection to mammoths that has made us yearn for their return, as if such creatures should still be here. Some experts are claiming that they can do just that. But the question facing geneticists, ecologists, ethicists, paleontologists, and the public isn’t about whether something mammoth-like could be created, but if trying to raise the Pleistocene dead is wise in the first place.
