Some big names are behind a company planning to bring an iconic animal back from extinction.
Paris Hilton, Tony Robbins, the Winklevoss twins, and the Hemsworth family have invested in Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based company specializing in genetic resurrection, first for the woolly mammoth and, more recently, for the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf.
The thylacine was the last sizeable predator to inhabit Tasmania. The wolf-like marsupial grew to six feet long and weighed in the range of 50 pounds. After years of overhunting and prior extirpations in New Guinea and mainland Australia, the last documented individual died in Tasmania’s Hobart Zoo in 1936.
Although neither the thylacine nor the woolly mammoth has yet to be resurrected, the company aims to mix the extinct species’ DNA with that of their closest extant relatives to recreate their genomes. In the thylacine’s case, the missing link is the dunnart, a mouse-like Australian marsupial. “We then take living cells from our dunnart and edit their DNA every place where it differs from the thylacine,” said Andrew Pask, a professor at the University of Melbourne and lead scientist on Colossal’s project. “We are essentially engineering our dunnart cell to become a Tasmanian tiger cell.”
Chris Hemsworth, who hails from Melbourne, released a statement to Bloomberg about the sci-fi-esque endeavor:
“The Tassie Tiger’s extinction had a devastating effect on our ecosystem and we are thrilled to support the revolutionary conservation efforts that are being made by Dr. Pask and the entire Colossal team.”
While we don’t know the other celebrities’ motivations for funding this project, we can make an obvious guess: it’s cool!