Return Of The Ibex

Mere weeks ago, I made my predictions of things that would most certainly happen in 2008. Among them was the following:

2. The guy that is trying to clone and give life to a wooly mammoth and a sabretooth tiger will finally do so. And they will kill him.

Suffice to say that this has yet to come to pass. But the following step toward it has, according to the Telegraph (UK):

The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain.

Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen.

Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned.

Sadly, the newborn ibex kid died shortly after birth due to physical defects in its lungs. Other cloned animals, including sheep, have been born with similar lung defects.

But the breakthrough has raised hopes that it will be possible to save endangered and newly extinct species by resurrecting them from frozen tissue.

It has also increased the possibility that it will one day be possible to reproduce long-dead species such as woolly mammoths and even dinosaurs.

What this has proven is that, among other things, it may eventually be possible to reanimate or clone other carbon based life forms currently frozen in liquid nitrogen, such as whatever they found at Area 51, or perhaps Ted Williams. When our staff knocked on the office door of Apoloblogology correspondent Dr. Ian Malcolm, he merely shouted that he wasn't there in a somewhat slurred voice.

Update:Inexplicably, it appears that one of the Fabulous Flying Archbold Brothers scooped me on this one. They haven't seen the last of me...