Did Mammoths really go extinct or are Indian elephants just hairless Mammoths

[Cainkane1]

Comparing the DNA of an excavated frozen mammoth in Siberia with the DNA of an Indian elephant reveals a very close kinship and if the Mammoth is ever to be cloned or partially brought back the most likely candidate to be mixing DNA to bring that about seems to be the Indian elephant rather than the African elephant.

Would this be possible if the Indian elephant were not in and of itself a Mammoth?

 

[William Parcher]

The Asian elephant and the Wooly mammoth are different species.

 

[Soapy Sam]

The Asian elephant and the Wooly mammoth are different species.

That's a label. They look different and one lot is extinct, so we label them as different species.
They might have been close enough genetically to interbreed, producing either sterile "mule" offspring or fully sexually viable offspring. We don't know, because as mentioned, mammoths are extinct and because we don't have a full description of mammoth DNA.

It would be pretty surprising if they could produce fertile offspring, as they had a long time to adapt to very different habitats, but until we can compare reasonably complete genomes it's hard to be certain.

 

[William Parcher]

They are not even the same genus. That's just a label too, right?

 

[ehcks]

They are not even the same genus. That's just a label too, right?

Yes? Taxonomy is just labels?

 

[William Parcher]

If you throw away the taxonomy and labels, how are you supposed to talk about animals to anyone?

 

[Beerina]

Can they produce non-sterile offspring together? The rest is just decorations.

 

[Bram Kaandorp]

If you throw away the taxonomy and labels, how are you supposed to talk about animals to anyone?

"Animals", as you put it, is a construct. There are no real species, because every discrete animal is the same species as its parents, as wel as a species onto itself, since it has a lot of DNA in common with its parents, but the combination is unique.

The only reason for the taxonomy is to make it easier to talk about certain groups of animals that, at a certain point in time, were/are similar enough to practically belong to the same species, so that we don't have to name every single animal individually.

I think the OP wondered whether maybe Asian elephants are descended from woolly mammoths, in the same way that birds are descended from certain dinosaurs.

 

[ddt]

We don't know, because as mentioned, mammoths are extinct and because we don't have a full description of mammoth DNA.

That surprises me. There are quite a number of mammoths that have been well-preserved in the permafrost, and their extinction was so recent - more recent than the extinction of the Neanderthal - that DNA likely has been preserved. I'd think that someone would have sequenced the DNA by now.

And actually, there is a team that is trying to clone the mammoth.

 

[John Jones]

That surprises me. There are quite a number of mammoths that have been well-preserved in the permafrost, and their extinction was so recent - more recent than the extinction of the Neanderthal - that DNA likely has been preserved. I'd think that someone would have sequenced the DNA by now.

And actually, there is a team that is trying to clone the mammoth.

IMO, the state of preservation of those mammoths and/or mastodons has been greatly exaggerated in popular reports.

 

[ddt]

"Animals", as you put it, is a construct. There are no real species, because every discrete animal is the same species as its parents, as wel as a species onto itself, since it has a lot of DNA in common with its parents, but the combination is unique.

The only reason for the taxonomy is to make it easier to talk about certain groups of animals that, at a certain point in time, were/are similar enough to practically belong to the same species, so that we don't have to name every single animal individually.

I disagree. A "species" is defined as those animals that can interbreed with each other to produce fertile offspring. Well, that's one of the definitions, and it is fuzzy around the edges.

But what all members of a species - say, humans - have in common is not that they have exactly the same genome, but that their chromosomes do have the same layout (*): how many chromosomes there are, and where the genes are located in the chromosomes. What makes the difference between individual humans is that they have different combinations of alleles on the loci for those genes. One person has two alleles for brown hair and two alleles for brown eyes, and another one brown hair and one blonde hair allele and two alleles for blue eyes, etc. etc. With the number of genes which have different possible alleles the number of combinations is virtually infinite; "possible" meaning an allele leading to a viable organism.

(*) Barring all kind of copying mishaps, such as trisomy of chromosome #21 (Down syndrome), or excessive replication of a part of a gene (as in Huntingdon's disease).

I think the OP wondered whether maybe Asian elephants are descended from woolly mammoths, in the same way that birds are descended from certain dinosaurs.

I'm not sure what the OP meant, maybe he'll clarify it.

But in short, the cloning effort will take an Indian elephant's egg, and replace the nuclear DNA with nuclear DNA from a mammoth. And because the DNA of both is very close, they hope that the thus developing embryo is compatible engouh with the elephant's womb that it will carry to term.

This, however, does not mean that both are the same species. Horses and donkeys are two different species and even have a different number of chromosomes, and still can interbreed (though the offspring is virtually always infertile). Lions and tigers are different species and can interbreed.

 

[William Parcher]

IMO, the state of preservation of those mammoths and/or mastodons has been greatly exaggerated in popular reports.

More than once I have read that the state of preservation in permafrost has been so great that some Russians were able to cook and eat mammoth meat. I don't know if it's true.

 

[John Jones]

More than once I have read that the state of preservation in permafrost has been so great that some Russians were able to cook and eat mammoth meat. I don't know if it's true.

That's the one I was thinking of. I traced this down as far as I could because some woo slinger (Nancy Lieder) was offering this as proof of a Planet X Pole shift.

The most believable (IMO) early accounts I found were that the dogs of these Russians ate the meat. Is there anything dogs won't eat?

The Discovery Channel had a documentary years ago (when it hadn't totally squandered its credibility) about attempts to excavate a mammoth with the idea of cloning it. The last time I checked, what they got was a frozen hairy bag of putrified mammoth decomposition fluids.

 

[Giordano]

I think it has already been touched on in this thread, but the definition of species is a bit hazy around the edges: as noted, an offspring is always the same species as its parents, but with time, offspring may diverge enough from its great, great, great... grandparents as to be considered a distinct species. So the change from one species to another is gradual, and there is often debate if two individuals are variants of one species, or two distinct species.

I wish it was even as simple as defining a species as composed of the individuals that can produce fertile offspring when bred- this is an valid criteria, but the barriers to interbreeding may be other than infertility when two different individuals are artificially crossed. Perhaps an adequate definition is that the members of one species do not typically interbreed in nature with members of another species. This may be for biological reasons, behavioral ones, or geographical ones (e.g. a big ocean between them). They are genetically isolated in nature.

Given what I know, the Mammoths and current elephants are so different in their phenotype and appearance that I would doubt that they could produce fertile offspring if they did try to interbred. That alone would make them different species (indeed, they are now judged as belonging to different genus). Just like sabertooth tigers and today's tigers. But even if Mammoths were still alive and could artificially breed with elephants, I suspect that due to their different geographical locations alone, they would seldom interbreed in nature, and this genetic isolation and their very different appearances would alone be enough for most people to call them different species.

I don't know: are Asian and African elephants considered the same species?

 

[ddt]

That's the one I was thinking of. I traced this down as far as I could because some woo slinger (Nancy Lieder) was offering this as proof of a Planet X Pole shift.

The most believable (IMO) early accounts I found were that the dogs of these Russians ate the meat. Is there anything dogs won't eat?

The Discovery Channel had a documentary years ago (when it hadn't totally squandered its credibility) about attempts to excavate a mammoth with the idea of cloning it. The last time I checked, what they got was a frozen hairy bag of putrified mammoth decomposition fluids.

But in any case, we even have mammoth soft tissue. And certainly bones. We only have bones from Neanderthals, and were able to sequence its DNA. In the end, that's all that matters.

 

[Giordano]

That's the one I was thinking of. I traced this down as far as I could because some woo slinger (Nancy Lieder) was offering this as proof of a Planet X Pole shift.

The most believable (IMO) early accounts I found were that the dogs of these Russians ate the meat. Is there anything dogs won't eat?

The Discovery Channel had a documentary years ago (when it hadn't totally squandered its credibility) about attempts to excavate a mammoth with the idea of cloning it. The last time I checked, what they got was a frozen hairy bag of putrified mammoth decomposition fluids.

I wouldn't count on seeing a resurrected Mammoth for quite a few years: the technical challenges are enormous, not the least being the fragmented nature of the DNA that comes from these decomposed corpses.

 

[Giordano]

But in any case, we even have mammoth soft tissue. And certainly bones. We only have bones from Neanderthals, and were able to sequence its DNA. In the end, that's all that matters.

Absolutely, can can obtain fairly complete Mammoth DNA sequences! This is pretty amazing and intellectually valuable. But synthesizing the huge lengths of DNA from that Mammoth sequence as full length chromosomes, putting in the necessary epigenetic modifications, and getting them all into a fertilized oocyte that can come to term in a pregnant elephant, will not be easy. In fact, hard barely describes it.

 

[John Jones]

But in any case, we even have mammoth soft tissue. And certainly bones. We only have bones from Neanderthals, and were able to sequence its DNA. In the end, that's all that matters.

But is the DNA intact enough to clone? I never heard anyone claim that any extinct specie's DNA was intact enough to do so.


ETA: See Giordano's post above.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

More than once I have read that the state of preservation in permafrost has been so great that some Russians were able to cook and eat mammoth meat. I don't know if it's true.

The most credible account of this I know of was made by Alexander Dolgun in his nonfiction book, Alexander Dolgun's story: An American in the Gulag. Good book even if that particular part isn't completely true. But I suspect it is true.

 

[Giordano]

More than once I have read that the state of preservation in permafrost has been so great that some Russians were able to cook and eat mammoth meat. I don't know if it's true.

My understanding is that dogs yes, people not clear. But even if people did eat this as a dare or to tell a story, remember that the usual diet of arctic explorers might might the leap to rotting Mammoth meat not too hard.