I'm new here, but I'm sure cloning is a recurring topic. The following source discusses the feasibility and morality of cloning mammoths.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agenbroad.html

The TV shows are fine and good, but I want to know what you all think of this issue.

Will it happen? If so, what about other extinct fauna or even humans?

With current technology, the idea of cloning mammoths by nuclear transfer is entirely fiction. To be sure, it is based on real-world fact, but in the same way Capt. Kirk’s USS Enterprise is based on a Boeing 747-400.

Cloning by nuclear transfer involves transferring a donor nucleus into an enucleated ovum. At present, and for the foreseeable future, nuclear transfer requires pristine nuclei. Merely having an organism’s isolated DNA is not sufficient, you need whole undamaged nuclei from the cells of the organism and the nuclei need to contain completely undamaged DNA. The only way to achieve this is to clone from living cells, or living cells that have been meticulously prepared and frozen in liquid nitrogen so that they can be re-animated in cell culture at a future time. These are the only ways that the nuclear DNA suffers no damage. There have been instances where dead animals have been cloned (eg. a prize breeding steer from Texas), but in all these cases samples were taken before death and prepared as I just described. Siberian tundra is cold but not nearly as cold as liquid nitrogen. A 10,000 year old frozen mammoth whose cells have undergone numerous freeze thaw cycles will not contain useable nuclei for cloning a new animal as there will be DNA degradation and fragmentation. Even a little bit precludes the technique.

Confusion sometimes arises because people do not realize that most routine DNA analysis techniques do not require pristine DNA, and that the words “clone” and “cloning” have multiple meanings depending on the context. So it is possible the clone<SUP>*</SUP> genes from the extracted mammoth DNA but not possible to clone<SUP>*</SUP> a new mammoth using the extracted mammoth DNA.

<blockquote><SUP>*</SUP>The first instance of the word clone refers to isolating a relatively small piece of DNA that encodes a gene and inserting it into bacteria so that unlimited new copies of that DNA can be made for further analysis. The second instance refers to generating a whole new embryo by nuclear transfer and using a surrogate female to carry the resulting animal.</blockquote>

The linked article was interesting in terms of the ethics discussion and background info – thanks for the link. :) But it didn’t provide much reality in terms of the science.

Under Feasibility it says:

Experts in the cloning field have claimed that if DNA of suitable quality and quantity is recovered, there will be little difficulty in producing a clone.
Yes, well I would say that statement is rather specious and probably reflects the usual selective interpretation of “expert opinions” that one finds in science reporting. The “if” in that statement is the stumbling block, and it’s a very big “if”. And even “if DNA of suitable quality and quantity is recovered” it is a far cry to then say that “there will be little difficulty in producing a clone”.

Why? The problem is mentioned here:

b) Body cells. As with Dolly, the cloned sheep, it is not necessary to have sexual reproduction to obtain a clone. In this technique, the egg of an Asian elephant would have the nucleus destroyed and replaced with the nucleus of a mammoth specimen. If successful, the resulting clone would be genetically all mammoth.
Since there are no mammoths in existence, a cross-species surrogate would be needed. This has already been achieved in other extant animals, but it adds a considerable degree of complexity to the whole procedure. The mammoth nucleus would need to be introduced into an elephant egg and the resulting mammoth embryo brought to term in an elephant female.

And the Possibilities of Success section is somewhat hollow:

The technology of cloning is new and its potential mostly unrealized, but there are reasons to be optimistic:
There have been many recent cloning successes: sheep, calves, kittens, monkeys, guars, mouflon sheep, the Arabian oryx, the African quagga, and others.
Yes, and all these examples of cloning success were achieved using living cells. The rest of that section is mere speculation on what animal cloning might mean for endangered species. Interesting to speculate on but does not constitute any supporting evidence for Possibilities of Success in cloning a mammoth.

while cloning may not be possible, i think that given enough time it would be possible to map out a mammoths DNA well enough that something ilke an elephant could be genetically modified to be as close to a mammoth as we will ever see

I appreciate the responses, especially yours Hercules. I'll share this information with my students. I was, as I always am, skeptical of internet sources such as this one. I just came across it and found the discussion interesting. Thanks again!

I was, as I always am, skeptical of internet sources such as this one. I just came across it and found the discussion interesting. Thanks again!
I too found the discussion very interesting. I noticed that the author has some impressive credentials - Ph.D. and professor emeritus at Northern Arizona University. :eek: But he is a paleontologist, not a geneticist. I have no doubt his article was very accurate and informative when it refers to the history of mammoths, and his ethical discussion about whether we should clone mammoths was valid and interesting. It's just that he left his area of expertise when he discussed whether we can clone mammoths.

I'm wondering if it is even a waste of time to try to clone a mammoth before the mommoth genome is totally mapped. It will be impossible to clone anything with a nucleus that is not 100% accurate. Gross mistakes, and even small ones can result in grossly inaccurate development, resulting in arrest of development. Or development not even starting.

So you would have to make sure you have a viable mammoth nucleus. Are you going to map the genome of the mammoth first? A mammoth of a task. Not sure it is viable. Are we going to make an entire set of nuclear DNA? Unheard of tehcnology. And use that? Untested technology?

Or just go blind? Take a million nuclei and hope one will be ok? Has anyone got the technology to clone an elephant? Is a mammoth different. Will the host egg cell be compatible? Will we be able to find a nucleus that is capable of running the developmental program. Not all cells are equally suited for cloning.

I wouldn't even know where to start. So many ifs.

I always hoped they might bring back a Tasmanian Tiger but unfortunately even that kind of recent DNA is too degraded.

There are more practical problems. The number of chromosomes of mammoths (58) is different from elephants (56) reducing the chance of successful crossbreeding, even if palaeo sperm was available. But even if the science was all taken care of, you'd still have to manage many elephants under labratory conditions.

Agenbroad also sees a problem with habitat. The Pleistocene megafauna steppe does not exist anymore. This was a weird place, containing both tundra taxa and much more southerly steppe taxa. It was arid enough to allow grazing thoughout winter season as typical insect remains show (little or no snow). Yet it was productive enough to sustain herds of buffaloes, horses, antelopes, giant deer, etc, etc, Did I forget to mention mammoths? So this productivity also puts minimum limits on aridness, temperatures and light(!) Nevertheless the Wooly Mammoth was a grazer, specialized on hard grasses (Gramininae) and would be able to live whereever wild horses live.

Agenbroad also mentions the mystery of the extinction, conceeding that people didn't do it. But what did then? With a little luck there will be a study in the magazin "Quartenary International" at the end of this year, which will proof unambigeously whodunnit.

I'm new here, but I'm sure cloning is a recurring topic. The following source discusses the feasibility and morality of cloning mammoths.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agenbroad.html

The TV shows are fine and good, but I want to know what you all think of this issue.

Will it happen? If so, what about other extinct fauna or even humans?

What dies...must stay dead. Thats what evolution is for. Otherwise all that time spent by process of evolution gets lost to nowhere.

Well, they miiiiight swing it if they cloned and sequenced all the DNA bits for a few individuals, picked up the overlaps and pieced it all together. It's true you'd need the chromosomes, though. Elephant probably not all that close. Maybe they could extract some functionals and inject them into an elephant. I'd like to see it done or tried, I think.

And I'd like to own the first one so that I could sell it. :D

Geoff

I'm new here, but I'm sure cloning is a recurring topic. The following source discusses the feasibility and morality of cloning mammoths.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agenbroad.html

The TV shows are fine and good, but I want to know what you all think of this issue.

Will it happen? If so, what about other extinct fauna or even humans?

On the ethical level: how would it be that different from keeping animals in zoos? I assume that would be the fate of any clone-outs, since you'd have to be nuts to let animals that valuable just walk around loose. As long as they could be assured not to be in pain and reasonably happy in their soft concrete car-port I don't suppose it would be tooo bad.

One could extend this to humans, of course, whether modern or ancient. Neither would be kept in a zoo, of course, but for a thinking species adaptation would probably not be too difficult. Of course, it goes without saying that you'd have to have some acceptable reason for cloning out CaveGirl: say if she were particularly hot, or something.

Geoff

About the problem of needing undamaged DNA, if we know what undamaged DNA should be, even without having a sample, could we create one in the future? Like some sort of artificial virus inserting the DNA like the T4 does to bacteria, and then using enzymes to remove the existing DNA.

Even if you had a complete map of a mammoth genome it wouldnt do you any good, information is carried by DNA in two ways: Both in the DNA lettering and in its topology or the way it's folded via methylization, this is something we have only very recently come to understand and it was a hell of a shock.

So as HR stated above you need a pristine nucleus to clone a mammoth at our present technology, postulating a more advanced technology you would need a DNA readout and a perfect record of what portions of the DNA strand were methylized as well as a means to turn all your information into a nucleus.

Probably not going to happen for a long while

I wonder if the methylation might be less sensitive to functional specificity than sequence variation? That is, if we got it and/or histone structure from a related (again, elephants - presumably where there's concordance between the African and Indian varieties) I wonder if that would be acceptable? What kind of differences are we talking about, morphologically, between mammoths and elephants. Fur, a bit bigger, maybe? 10k years, no? On that short a time frame, and with the long generation intervals for pachyderms, there might be relatively little sequence/structural variation between them and we might be looking at a variant of the dog/wolf scenario. In that case, "mammothness" might amount to nothing more than frequency changes in particular functional allelic variants, corresponding to a nearly Fisherian/Wrightian system. None of those allelic variants would be extant now, but maybe one could build a mammoth fairly easily on an elephant genomic topology. Methylation could be assumed from elephants, or applied sequentially with knowledge of gene sequence (from elephants again, prob) function in a "hit or miss" system. Be interesting to try, anyway. That's all I'm saying.

Geoff

I doubt it, the wolf, coyote, jackal, and domestic dog (including the dingo) all have 78 chromosomes which lets them hybridize easily and can be considered one species (with BIG variability), the mammoth has two more chromosomes than the elephant and so is a totally different (if related) species, which would lead me to believe that you couldnt extrapolate information derived from an elephant to a mammoth.

On the other hand donkeys have 62 chromosomes and horses have 64 chromosomes and they can crossbreed into a mule (which is usually sterile)

But you're right, it would be damn interesting to try.

But then what do I know, I'm not a geniticist (or about to be one either)

Two more? That's interesting. Maybe they might just be fusions in the elephant. Hmm.

Geoff

I too found the discussion very interesting. I noticed that the author has some impressive credentials - Ph.D. and professor emeritus at Northern Arizona University. :eek: But he is a paleontologist, not a geneticist. I have no doubt his article was very accurate and informative when it refers to the history of mammoths, and his ethical discussion about whether we should clone mammoths was valid and interesting. It's just that he left his area of expertise when he discussed whether we can clone mammoths.Larry D. Agenbroad, Ph.D., is director of the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota and professor "emeritus" at Northern Arizona University. As "emeritus" of NAU he no longer is directly affiliated with NAU's very respectable Department of Biological Sciences in any way. I would appreciate it if you do not associate him with NAU. Nevertheless, I do see a remote possibility, in the future, where DNA cloning with Mammoths could be a possibilty.

With current technology, the idea of cloning mammoths by nuclear transfer is entirely fiction. ....

Cloning by nuclear transfer involves transferring a donor nucleus into an enucleated ovum. At present, and for the foreseeable future, nuclear transfer requires pristine nuclei. Merely having an organism’s isolated DNA is not sufficient,

I 100% agree ;)

I would appreciate it if you do not associate him with NAU.
Why would you appreciate that? Emeritus Professors frequently maintain teaching roles at their universities, but I have no idea if that is the case with this guy. Did you get your five degrees at NAU, or something? :bugeye:

Nevertheless, I do see a remote possibility, in the future, where DNA cloning with Mammoths could be a possibilty.
"DNA cloning with mammoths" is a reality in the present.

Here's my two cents worth.

Way back in 1980, I filed a Patent Disclosure with the US Patent and Trademark Office for cloning of a Wooly Mammoth. Never perfected it as an actual patent, however, due to the complexities, etc., and my belief that it would not happen during my lifetime. It envisioned extracting a nucleus from a frozen carcass, inserted into an elephant egg, as one possible method. Anyone who wants to try it, please contact me for a release of my cloud on patent rights!

The difficulties are tremendous, but in theory a complete set of DNA could be obtained by using many sets from several Mammoths, and finding the appropriate overlaps to 'clean-up' the degradations. However, how that task would be performed is not yet known, and indeed, the 'structure' of the DNA, within the chromosomes, would have to be exactly replicated as well.

Degradation occurs for a number of reasons. One I've not seen cited in the scientific literature previously, but which I reasoned exists, is the degradation due to radiation exposure from C-14, U-238, U-235, and other long-lived radioisotopes that are naturally occuring and present in living cells.

People and other living organisms receive on the order of about 10+ milliRads/year of radiation exposure from such naturally occuring radioisotopes. A frozen carcass (Mammoth), after 10,000 years, would receive on the order of 100+ Rads, sufficient to degrade the DNA substantially. This would need to be repaired, as discussed above. Other types of degradation (chemical, spontaneous bond-breakage, etc.) likely also occur, leaving the DNA very fragmented after 10,000 years at just a few degrees below zero C, way hotter than liquid Nitrogen. Now there's a task for our future biologists!

Walter L. Wagner (Dr.)

Walter: Since I have shown you on our other website that we have unearthed the remains of T. Rex (fur, bone, and tissue) and have already sequenced the DNA of Mammoths, why the question? Since we know the code, it's only a matter of time before we put theory into practice. Hope your patent is still valid?

<B>Warning: Valich crapola alert!</B>http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y260/bubblepics/policelights.gif

Since I have shown you on our other website that we have unearthed the remains of T. Rex (fur, bone, and tissue)
Maybe, but was DNA extracted?


….and have already sequenced the DNA of Mammoths
Have we? How much mammoth DNA do you think we have sequenced?


Since we know the code, it's only a matter of time before we put theory into practice.
Really? Can you tell us how we can use DNA sequence alone to produce a whole new animal?

Walter: Since I have shown you on our other website that we have unearthed the remains of T. Rex (fur, bone, and tissue) and have already sequenced the DNA of Mammoths, why the question? Since we know the code, it's only a matter of time before we put theory into practice. Hope your patent is still valid?

T. rex fur? Where's this again?

Geoff

Someone should publish that.

T. rex.: Last year they found an intact femur bone covered with fur, soft tissues, blood vessels, proteins involved in the bone formation: the skies the limit on what they can do with this: 70 mya.

"The new study, published in the respected journal Science, revealed the presence of morphological objects that seem to be blood vessels with endothelial nuclei visible, red blood cells, and osteocytes. Scientists removed the inner cortical bone from the femur and soaked it for 7 days in a solution of dilute acid to remove the surrounding bone. The resulting tissue was flexible and retained at least some cellular and subcellular structures." http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/dinoblood.html

Excellent photos from original posting by MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/

Full text about the blood vessels: "Tyrannosaurus Blood Vessels Found," by Erik Stakstad: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/324/2

Mass spectroscopy could be used for DNA analysis: "If the cells consist of original material, paleontologists might be able to extract new information about dinosaurs. For instance, they could use the same sort of protein antibody testing that helps biologists determine the evolutionary relationships of living organisms. "There's a reasonable chance that there may be intact proteins, even DNA might be extracted," says David Martill of the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_trexsofttissue.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5717/1952
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;307/5717/1852b

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol307/issue5717/images/large/307_1952_F2.jpeg

See excellent collections of pics: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol307/issue5717/images/large/307_1952_F2.jpeg

OK, I get the first one! Would love to have a mammoth as a pet.

As to the patentability, I believe that what would be patentable would be the technique for taking a genome on paper (or computer disk) and using that to construct a chromosome. While we can go the other direction (gene sequencing), I don't believe we can yet take the data, and construct the actual genes on a chromosome, etc.

The T. rex proteins could be used to deduce the genes that coded for them, but it is unlikely that there is enough intact material (unless there are complete cellular nuclei) to get a complete T. rex genome. Better go back to looking for baby T. rex blood (and a few white cells, with nuclei) in amberized mosquitoes, ala Jurassic Park style.

Thanks for the pics, Valich.

Walter: I agree 100%, but I qualify it by saying "yet." Scientific advancement and technology are moving at too fast of a pace to be predictable.

Also, you know something about prokarytes that intriques you about the DNA loop that I don't understand or know. What is the connection you see in this when we're discussing flagellum evolution. What puzzles me is why the same 9 microtubule in centriole organization from spindles to cilia. There's a protein mutation here from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, but why the same 9-configuration. It's a protein mutation in the centosome? Probably should post the reply on the other forum.

T. rex.: Last year they found an intact femur bone covered with fur, soft tissues, blood vessels, proteins involved in the bone formation: the skies the limit on what they can do with this: 70 mya.

"The new study, published in the respected journal Science, revealed the presence of morphological objects that seem to be blood vessels with endothelial nuclei visible, red blood cells, and osteocytes. Scientists removed the inner cortical bone from the femur and soaked it for 7 days in a solution of dilute acid to remove the surrounding bone. The resulting tissue was flexible and retained at least some cellular and subcellular structures." http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/dinoblood.html

Excellent photos from original posting by MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/

Full text about the blood vessels: "Tyrannosaurus Blood Vessels Found," by Erik Stakstad: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2005/324/2

Mass spectroscopy could be used for DNA analysis: "If the cells consist of original material, paleontologists might be able to extract new information about dinosaurs. For instance, they could use the same sort of protein antibody testing that helps biologists determine the evolutionary relationships of living organisms. "There's a reasonable chance that there may be intact proteins, even DNA might be extracted," says David Martill of the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_trexsofttissue.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5717/1952
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;307/5717/1852b

Where is the fur?

Where is the DNA? (could and might are not are and is)

I accept that this is a fascinating debate. How exciting would it be to see a 'real live' woolly mammoth? Or even a prehistoric gnat for that matter (although the impact would not be quite the same)? Putting aside the moral debate - 'because we could doesn't mean to say we should' I feel I must highlight something about human interactions with animals generally -

human intervention = bad for animal (on so many levels!)

Modern 'man' is destroying in less than two centuries what the process of evolution has delivered over millions of years.

Before we consider the practicalities of cloning long extinct animals perhaps we could focus our attention on finding a way to preserve what we already have before we face the very real possibility of mass extinction within OUR OWN lifetimes :(

Could we preserve intact DNA of every threatened species now as a precautionary measure?
A Clone of Ark? :p sorry!

Or is someone somewhere doing that already? :confused:

The T. rex proteins could be used to deduce the genes that coded for them....
No, you can't do that as the DNA code is "degenerate"...

http://www.ncbioportal.org/training/mod4/images/image005.jpg

<img width="40" height="40" src="http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y260/bubblepics/policelights.gif">

T. rex.: Last year they found an intact femur bone covered with fur, soft tissues, blood vessels, proteins involved in the bone formation: the skies the limit on what they can do with this: 70 mya.
The “skies (sic) the limit”? Has anyone done anything other than photograph the samples and describe morphology? What do you think will be achieved using these samples?

And you didn’t answer my question(s):

You said....
....and have already sequenced the DNA of Mammoths
And I asked....
Have we? How much mammoth DNA do you think we have sequenced?

You do not expect a serious answer, do you?

mitochondrial DNA

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4535190.stm

Hercules:

Your valid criticism of my hasty statement is well noted. I got carried away in the moment!

Since we know that some substitutions do occur without any ill effect on the organism (random mutations of no effect), I wonder if we used the protein to create our own 'synthetic' DNA that would code for that protein, if that would still be viable. Probably not if done for large chunks of the DNA, possibly so for smuch smaller portions?

Walter

Since we know that some substitutions do occur without any ill effect on the organism (random mutations of no effect), I wonder if we used the protein to create our own 'synthetic' DNA that would code for that protein, if that would still be viable. Probably not if done for large chunks of the DNA, possibly so for smuch smaller portions?
Yes indeed, you’ve hit upon a very interesting topic here. You are quite correct that ‘silent’ point mutations can occur that alter the codon but don’t alter the amino acid that is encoded. In theory it would seem that the specific codons used to encode each amino acid of a protein are not relevant. In other words, it’s the primary amino acid sequence of the protein that is important, not which codons are used to encode that protein.

However, in practice this is not the case. There is a “codon bias” that exists for most organisms. Over the whole genome, organisms tend to favour particular codons for particular amino acids. If you take a gene from one organism in place it in another organism with a different codon bias, that gene will often not be expressed with the same efficiency as it would if it were composed of codons reflecting the endogenous codon bias. Mind you, this isn’t an all-or-nothing scenario. In such an instance, the gene might have a reduced expression level but will still be functional.

So when it comes to silent point mutations which alter single base pairs in single codons of a gene, codon bias is not a factor. Codon bias isn’t usually a major factor when dealing with genetic engineering experiments where a single gene from another organism is inserted. However, in the hypothetical thought experiment where a woolly mammoth genome is artificially constructed from its proteome, there will be intermittent incorrect codon bias across the whole genome. Even if we could somehow create a new embryo from the artificial genome, embryonic development is reliant on a staggeringly complex interplay of gene expression levels. Perturbations in single gene expression levels can have significant results. I doubt it would be viable.

And of course this hypothetical experiment totally overlooks the fact the proteome can suggest only the DNA sequence for the open reading frames of genes. The amino acid sequences of proteins give no information on promoter sequences, upstream and downstream enhancer sequences, and 5’ and 3’ untranslated regions of the mRNA, all of which play vital roles in controlling gene expression. Without this info there is no way to artificially construct a viable genome from a proteome sequence.

mitochondrial DNA
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4535190.stm
Yep, this is what I was getting at. We have sequence for a portion of the mammoth mitochondrial genome and a handful of nuclear genes.

How the mammoths died out:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/BB.ppt

use the speaking notes for cueing the presentation:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/Hot%20Springs.doc

(the paper is submitted to Quartenary International)

and a recent confirmation from Alaska:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/ice-age.html

"Extinct Mammoth DNA Decoded: The 5,000 DNA letters spell out a large chunk of the genetic code of its mitochondria, published in the online edition of Nature....The team of researchers - from Germany, the UK, and the US - extracted and analysed mammoth DNA using a new technique that works on even the tiny quantities of fossilised bone - in this case 200 milligrams. 46 chunks of DNA sequence were matched up and arranged in order, giving a complete record of the mammoth's mitochondrial DNA.

The complete mitochondrial DNA of an extinct animal has been sequenced before but only for the flightless bird, the moa, which died out about 500 years ago, says Dan Bradley, an expert in ancient DNA at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4535190.stm

What is this "new technique" that they used?

I read somewhere that some mini wooly mammoths, size-reduced because they were on an island off Alaska, survived until circa 8,000 years ago, long after their close cousins had died out on the mainland. Do we have any more information on that. I'll bet that that DNA is much fresher.

Thanks for the update on proteomes, by the way, Hercules!

Kind of reminds me of the mini-humanoids (not pygmy homo sapiens, but in the homo genus) that developed on that Pacific island (Homo florensis?), in which many species down-size to be competitive on islands.

No info on that, but I also recall something on that order?

Still, if we can sequence and match all the proteins from the tissues in the above, then why can't we use reverse translation to encode the entire DNA? Sequential cloning.

I read somewhere that some mini wooly mammoths, size-reduced because they were on an island off Alaska, survived until circa 8,000 years ago, long after their close cousins had died out on the mainland. Do we have any more information on that. I'll bet that that DNA is much fresher.


The most recents mammoths are from Wrangel Island, the youngest carbon date being 3720 years, which calibrates to ~4086 Calendar years BP (Before Present, "present" being 1950). So the actual age in 2006 is roughly 4142 years.

It was thought that this was also a dwarf species. However due to this expectation, the molar was misidentified as M4 while it was actually an M3, I seem to remember, with a considerable difference in size. Has been a big battle, no-one wants to be wrong.

The island dwarfing hypothesis is very thin. The opposite also happens, species increasing in size. Dale Guthrie has made a comprehensive study of several extinct Alaskan horses species to find out that they started to reduce is size considerably in the last millenia before extinction.

The Assateague and Chincoteague ponies originally came from Spain but are thought to have become dwarfed ponies due to the poor diet that they are restricted to on the small island. Perhaps malnutrition is at the roots of the island dwarfing hypothesis?