What if woolly mammoths once again roamed Earth? It may not be so far-fetched. Last year, an Australian team of scientists took a big step toward resurrecting a long-gone species. Using cloning technology, their “Lazarus Project” created an embryo of the extinct gastric-brooding frog.
With more-than-30-year-old frozen tissues from a preserved frog, the team extracted and implanted the nucleus of a dead cell into a fresh host egg from a distantly related species. The result: “It’s not a tadpole, it’s not a frog, but it’s a long way toward bringing it back,” says Mike Archer, a professor of biology at the University of New South Wales, who led the research.
The original frog, which disappeared in 1983, was a genuine freak of nature. Mothers swallowed their eggs, transformed their stomachs into wombs, then coughed up fully formed babies.
Archer’s new embryo lived only a few days, but made it longer ...
