Texas Company Obtains $150 Million in Funding to Bring Back Dodo Bird

[Elderberry]

Legal Insurrection by Leslie Eastman Saturday, February 4, 2023

Fortunately, returning T-Rex is not on the agenda.

Colossal Biosciences, a Texas firm that is the world’s first “de-extinction” company, has announced it has obtained $150 million in funding to bring back the extinct dodo bird. Of course, it helped that the project’s goal was ostensibly tied to “climate change.”

    Colossal Biosciences, which previously made headlines for its plans to to bring back the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger, says it is now turning its attention to the dodo.

    The bird, which is closely related to pigeons, went extinct in 1662 after being wiped out from its native ecosystem, Mauritius, because of human settlement and ecosystem competition. The dodo is widely considered one of the best examples of human-induced extinction.

    The dodo will mark the third animal the company is working on. Colossal is most famous for its lofty goal of creating a woolly mammoth-elephant hybrid, but the company also announced plans last year to try and back another extinct animal, the Tasmanian tiger.

    Colossal Biosciences, which this week announced a new $150 million funding round, is led by Austin-based entrepreneur Ben Lamm and geneticist George Church of Harvard Medical School, was formed in 2021 with the goal of advancing the field of de-extinction and combating climate change.

The approach will be based on CRISPR/Cas9 technology, which edits genes by precisely cutting DNA and then letting natural DNA repair processes to take over. The researchers plan to cut and paste the genetic code to align it as closely with the dodo samples as possible.

    In mammals, this gene-edited material would then be embedded in the reproductive system of an existing relative of the species.

More: https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/02/texas-company-obtains-150-million-in-funding-to-bring-back-dodo-bird/

[Smokin Joe]

I thought they were hunted to death.

[roamer_1]

I thought they were hunted to death.

Because they taste like chicken?

That's one big-ass chicken.
How long before someone in Texas figures out how to make BBQ out of that!
Hot wings as long as your arm... 

[catfish1957]

Messing with mother nature has no good end results.

[Elderberry]

https://www.britannica.com/video/214809/Dodo-extinct-bird-island-Indian-Ocean-human-induced-extinction

The dodo bird is one of the most famous examples of human-induced extinction. A large, flightless bird once native to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean... ... the dodo was bigger than a turkey and weighed about 23 kilograms. It had blue-gray feathers, a large head and beak, and small, useless wings. Although the birds were terrestrial, their bone structure was hollow like that of birds that fly. Dodos likely nested on the ground, and it is thought that they laid a single egg. Unfortunately, the species was wiped out less than 200 years after its discovery. The birds were discovered by Portuguese sailors around 1507.

The birds had no natural predators, so they were unafraid of humans.

These sailors, and others to come, quickly decimated the dodo population as an easy source of fresh meat for their voyages. As humans settled on the island, loss of habitat further threatened the birds.

Humans also brought animals, such as pigs and monkeys, which ate the vulnerable eggs and competed with the dodos for food. Over-harvesting of the birds, combined with habitat loss and a losing competition with the newly introduced animals, was too much for the dodos to survive.

The last dodo was killed in 1681, and the species was lost forever to extinction.