VYAZMA - 25 June 2012 11:47 AM

TimB-Some Japanese scientists are planning to bring back wooly mammoths, if they can get some viable DNA, and have already selected an area in northern Siberia for them to live.  Since we humans probably helped push them over the edge to extinction, maybe it is the ethical thing to do to bring them back.

From an ethical point of view, your standpoint is incorrect.  Plus unless I’m mistaken, wooly mammoths exited due to warming climates. Mammals started getting smaller at that time too.  There used to be all kinds of giant sized mammals around that time.
Even if humans hunted them to extinction(like the American Bison-practically) it is just a product of nature.
But subjectively…from an ethical standpoint, let’s not bring them back!  This is human world now, most animals suffer here.(including most humans!)

Archeological evidence suggests that human hunters contributed to their demise, though perhaps they only expedited it.  Who knows, if there had been no humans hunting them, there might be little mammoths in the continent today.

I recommend reading THIS on the extinction of large animals and THIS on America’s wild animals at Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending’s excellent blog. One of the best there is!

Warning: This blog is not recommended for politically correct individuals!

I don’t know George, it appears that there are at present as many as 4 scenarios for the killing of the megafauna including a potential blast by a comet. Check out the Nova site:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/end-big-beasts.html

Cap’t Jack

Of course. But I thought the topic has shifted to the more recent extinction of large animals. Cochran’s post is obviously not talking about the dinosaurs.

It’s no big jump of thought, that humans, to some extent, played a part in the extinction of the Mammoths.  In our very recent history, as previously noted, we almost wiped out the buffalo.  Due to ethical stances, by some, the buffalo were, eventually, assisted in avoiding extinction. 

There would be ethical considerations to be made if the Mammoths were brought back, but it would surely be interesting.

Sorry, Jack, I didn’t have time to look at the link you provided until now. I assumed it was referring to the extinction of dinosaurs. I now see it discusses the more recent large animals. Thanks for the link.

No problem George, I hadn’t heard about the comet scenario in reference to the megafauna extinction. Scary!

Cap ‘t Jack