You’ve probably seen the headlines popping up every few months. They’re usually flashy, a bit sensational, and make it sound like a real-life Jurassic Park is opening its gates next Tuesday. But the question remains: are they bringing back the woolly mammoth, or is this just high-level venture capital theater?
Honestly, the answer is a messy "yes," but maybe not in the way you’re imagining. We aren't talking about finding a frozen, magic egg and popping it into an incubator. It’s way more complicated. And way weirder.
The company at the center of this storm is Colossal Biosciences. Founded by tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm and world-renowned Harvard geneticist George Church, they’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars to do what was once considered strictly sci-fi. They aren't just messing around with DNA in a basement; they are literally trying to rewrite the code of life to reverse an extinction that happened roughly 4,000 years ago.
The Elephant in the Room (Literally)
Let’s get one thing straight: nobody is making a 100% "pure" woolly mammoth. That’s impossible. DNA degrades over time, even in the permafrost of Siberia. What we have are fragments—bits and pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle where half the boxes were thrown in a blender.
Instead, scientists are working on a hybrid. Think of it as an Asian elephant with a massive software update. By using CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, researchers are taking the genome of the Asian elephant (which is about 99.6% identical to a mammoth anyway) and splicing in the specific traits that made mammoths, well, mammoths.
We’re talking about the small ears to prevent frostbite. The shaggy, double-layered coat. Those massive subcutaneous fat deposits for surviving lean winters. And, crucially, the hemoglobin that actually functions in sub-zero temperatures. So, when people ask are they bringing back the woolly mammoth, the technical answer is that they are creating a cold-resistant elephant that looks and acts exactly like its extinct cousin.
It’s a proxy. A surrogate. A "functional" mammoth.
Why Bother? It’s Not Just for the Grams
You might think this is just a billionaire's ego project. "Why spend $225 million on an extinct elephant when we have modern species dying out right now?" It’s a fair question. I used to think the same thing. But the pitch from George Church and his team isn't about making a cool zoo attraction.
📖 Related: Why Amazon Checkout Not Working Today Is Driving Everyone Crazy
It’s about the Arctic.
The Arctic permafrost is a massive ticking time bomb for the planet. It stores billions of tons of carbon. As it melts, that carbon releases as methane, which is way worse for global warming than CO2. Back in the day, mammoths acted like giant ecological engineers. They knocked over trees, trampled moss, and packed down the snow.
That trampling is key.
By stripping away the insulating layer of snow and exposing the ground to the freezing air, they kept the permafrost much colder. Without them, the Arctic has turned into a shrubby, mossy mess that absorbs heat. Colossal argues that reintroducing these "mammophants" could theoretically help stabilize the permafrost and save us from a climate catastrophe.
The CRISPR Breakthroughs of 2024 and 2025
So, how close are we? Well, 2024 was a massive year for this project. In March, Colossal announced they had successfully derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from Asian elephants.
That sounds like boring lab talk, right? It isn't.
It was a huge hurdle. Elephant cells are notoriously "stubborn." They have unique genetic pathways—like the TP53 gene which helps them fight cancer—that make them hard to reprogram. By cracking this nut, the team can now create any type of elephant cell (sperm, egg, hair, skin) in a dish. This allows them to test their mammoth gene edits without ever touching a live animal.
👉 See also: What Cloaking Actually Is and Why Google Still Hates It
They’ve already identified the specific genes for hair growth and fat storage. They’re testing them in lab cultures right now. They aren't just guessing anymore; they are seeing how these "mammoth" genes behave in living elephant tissue.
The Artificial Womb Problem
Even if you have a perfect embryo, you still need to grow the thing. You can't just shove a mammoth embryo into a regular Asian elephant. Asian elephants are endangered themselves. Risking a mother’s life to carry a hybrid experiment is an ethical nightmare that most scientists aren't willing to touch.
So, Colossal is building artificial wombs.
Yeah. Matrix-style pods.
This is arguably the hardest part of the entire "bringing back the woolly mammoth" saga. Developing an external gestation system for a 200-pound calf that takes 22 months to grow is a feat of engineering that has never been done. They’ve had some success with small-scale versions for mice and even lambs (like the Biobag project at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia), but scaling that up to elephant size is a decade-long challenge.
Some skeptics, like Dr. Victoria Herridge, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum, think the timeline is total nonsense. Colossal says they could have the first calves by 2027 or 2028. Most independent scientists are betting on the 2030s, or maybe never.
The "Should We" vs. The "Can We"
There’s a massive ethical rift here. Some biologists argue that we are "playing God" with ecosystems we no longer understand. If you drop a herd of hybrid mammoths into modern-day Siberia, what happens to the local flora? What happens to the indigenous communities living there?
✨ Don't miss: The H.L. Hunley Civil War Submarine: What Really Happened to the Crew
And then there's the behavior issue.
Mammoths were social. They learned from their elders. They had complex matriarchal structures. If you grow a mammoth in a lab and stick it in a field, it’s not a mammoth. It’s a lonely, confused animal that has no idea how to be a mammoth. It would be like a human being raised by robots in a basement and then being expected to lead a tribe in the jungle.
Colossal counters this by saying they’ll use AI to analyze old mammoth behavior and potentially use modern elephants as "surrogate" social teachers. It sounds a bit thin, doesn't it?
Real-World Progress: It’s Not Just Mammoths
While everyone focuses on the hairy giants, the tech being developed for the woolly mammoth is already helping living species. This is the part people usually miss.
- EEHV Vaccine: The Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus kills up to 40% of Asian elephant calves in captivity and the wild. Colossal’s research into elephant genetics has directly contributed to vaccine development that is saving living elephants today.
- Genetic Diversity: The tools they are building to "resurrect" genes can be used to inject genetic diversity back into "bottlenecked" species like the northern white rhino.
- The Dodo and the Thylacine: They’ve already branched out. They are working on the Dodo (Mauritius) and the Tasmanian Tiger (Australia).
How to Follow the Science
If you’re genuinely curious about the timeline for are they bringing back the woolly mammoth, you need to ignore the hype and look at the peer-reviewed milestones.
First, watch for the "multiplex editing" papers. This will be the moment they prove they can swap 50+ genes at once without killing the cell. Second, keep an eye on their progress with the Tasmanian Tiger. Since marsupials have much shorter gestation periods and give birth to tiny, underdeveloped "joeys," Colossal will likely succeed with the Thylacine long before a mammoth ever takes its first breath.
What You Can Do Now
If you want to stay on top of this without getting bogged down in corporate PR, follow the independent labs.
- Check out the Paleogenomics Lab at UC Santa Cruz: Beth Shapiro is a pioneer in ancient DNA and offers a much more grounded perspective on what is actually possible.
- Monitor the Pleistocene Park project: This is a real-life experiment in Siberia run by Nikita and Sergey Zimov. They are already trying to restore the "mammoth steppe" using existing animals like bison and horses. They are the ones who would likely host the mammoths if they ever arrive.
- Read "How to Clone a Mammoth" by Beth Shapiro: It’s the gold standard for understanding the actual science behind de-extinction.
We are living in a weird era where the line between "extinct" and "endangered" is starting to blur. Whether these creatures ever walk the tundra again is still a gamble, but the technology being built to try it is already changing the world. It’s not a matter of "if" we will have the power to do this; it's a matter of whether we have the wisdom to manage the consequences.
The mammoth might be the headline, but the real story is our newfound ability to edit the history of life on Earth. Just don't go looking for tickets to a mammoth zoo just yet—you’re going to be waiting a while.