Long-extinct woolly mammoths are being brought back – within just four years, the entrepreneur claims

This could get hairy.

A high-tech company is confident that animals extinct from the Ice Age – such as the woolly mammoth – can be resurrected by 2028, thanks to funding from Hollywood stars including Paris Hilton and Chris Hemsworth.

Startup Colossal Biosciences, which describes itself as “the world's first anti-extinction company,” is developing a way to revive “core” genes from long-extinct animals such as the mammoth, dodo and Tasmanian tiger, reported The Independent.

The Texas-based company has raised more than $235 million from its celebrity backers like motivational speaker Tony Robbins and PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, according to The Intercept — and, in a wild twist, from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). . .

Its CEO Ben Lamm compared the process to a “reverse Jurassic Park” in an interview with the Daily Mail.

“We have set the date for our first mammoth at the end of 2028 and are currently well on track, which is great,” Lamm told the Independent, pointing out that reviving the prehistoric giant will require a 22-month gestation period.

“But since the other species have a much shorter gestation period, it is very likely that we will see another species before the mammoth.”

To that end, it would take “just a few weeks” for the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct in the early 1980s, to make a resurgence, and the dodo bird, last seen in the 16th century, would about need a month.

“I think it is very likely that we will have a species before 2028, and it will be one of the three species that you are looking at,” he added.

Although the mammoth became extinct about 4,000 years ago, the large animal – weighing 6 tons – shares 99.5% of its genes with the Asian elephant. Gene editing and stem cells would be fused with an Asian elephant egg from a healthy female of that species.

“We don't take mammoth DNA and plug the holes,” Lamm told the Daily Mail, alluding to the catastrophic process described in Michael Crichton's 1990 sci-fi novel Jurassic Park and the subsequent film series becomes. “We are trying to transfer the lost genes from mammoths to Asian elephants.”

The company says the resurrection would be “more specifically a cold-resistant elephant with all of the core biological characteristics of the woolly mammoth,” according to a statement on its website.

“It will walk like a woolly mammoth, look like one, sound like one, but most importantly, it will be able to inhabit the same ecosystem previously abandoned by the extinction of the mammoth.”

Additionally, if the creature were to return to arctic environments, the species could be a win for the environment, the company claimed.

“It could help reverse rapid climate warming and, more importantly, protect the Arctic permafrost,” said Colossal, which stressed that the soil layer is “one of the largest carbon stores in the world.”

“Bringing back the woolly mammoth means bringing back a better earth.”

But as Colossal touts the potential to bring back the dodo and other long-lost animals, scientists have called the idea theater.

“Extinction is a fairytale science,” Jeremy Austin, director of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA, told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2022. “Mammoth extinction is more about media attention to scientists and less about serious science.” ”

But Lamm won't let his dreams fail because of skepticism.

“Critics who say extinction of genes to create replacement species is impossible are critics who simply are not fully informed and do not know the science,” he told The Intercept at the time.

“We have been clear from day one that as we work toward combating extinction, we will develop technologies that we hope will benefit both human health and conservation.”

Earlier this week, Colossal Biosciences announced that it had created a nonprofit foundation focused on “conservation initiatives.”

According to a statement, the initiative would use the company's technologies to “rapidly revolutionize species conservation and ecosystem restoration.”

Partnerships with external organizations “will focus on species that can benefit from genetic rescue, biobanking and the creation and use of reference genomes.” Another focus will be on accelerating species adaptation, creating genetic resilience through biotechnology, finding lost species and leveraging technological advances such as AI, machine learning and computational biology to improve our understanding of animal behavior and ecosystems.”