Scientists want to bring mammoths back to life
Try easier levels of this lesson: Woolly Mammoths - Level 0, Woolly Mammoths - Level 1 or Woolly Mammoths - Level 2.
Download the 27-page lesson | More mini-lessons
The reading
Scientists are working on bringing back the woolly mammoth. The giant creature is an ancestor of the Asian elephant. It became extinct over 4,000 years ago, but scientists and entrepreneurs want to bring it back to life. The idea is like something from the movie Jurassic Park. Scientists will use the DNA from the bones of a mammoth found in Siberia to revive the mammoth. They will also use cloning techniques. It would be the first time since the Ice Age for a mammoth to walk on the earth. The lead scientist is professor George Church, a geneticist from Harvard Medical School. He is an expert in gene editing. An entrepreneur, Ben Lamm, said: "Our goal is to have our first calves in the next four to six years."
Ben Lamm is founder of a technology and software company called Colossal. He has provided $15 million for the research to move forward. He said he has big plans to bring the mammoth back to life and to revive other species. He said he hoped to "rapidly advance the field of species de-extinction" and "to restore the woolly mammoth to the Arctic tundra". Mr Lamm believes the research will result in innovations that will benefit biotechnology and health care. Lamm compared the project to the Apollo missions to the moon. He said they made people excited about space. They led to the development of everyday products like freeze-dried food, and of technology such as GPS. Mr Lamm believes genetics will improve our lives.
Sources:
- https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-back-woolly-mammoth-from-extinction
- https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/13/world/woolly-mammoth-resurrect-deextinction-scn/index.html
- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/09/13/resurrect-woolly-mammoth-company-plans/8325439002/
Make sure you try all of the online activities for this reading and listening - There are dictations, multiple choice activities, drag and drop activities, sentence jumbles, which word activities, text reconstructions, spelling, gap fills and a whole lot more. Please enjoy :-)
