Bioscientists working to ‘de-extinct’ Dodo bird and release it back into the wild

Experts are working to resurrect an animal extinct since the 1660s, and release it back into the wild, using complex bioscience.

Bioscientists are working on the possibility of bringing back a genetically modified version of the long extinct – yet kinda cool – flightless bird, the dodo.

It’s been extinct since the 1660s but now scientists are hoping to bring the dodo bird back to life.

A company called Colossal Biosciences has just announced plans to resurrect the bird and release it in its natural habitat.

You may know the flightless bird from the well-used phrase “dead as a dodo” but evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro wants that saying to go extinct.

According to Vice, she explained: “I’ve always been fascinated with the dodo.

“It’s the poster child, in a sad way, for how human habitat alteration can drive species to extinction.”

The bird will be ‘created’ using edited DNA. Picture: Oli Scarff/Getty Images.

Ben Lamm, who co-founded Colossal Biosciences, told the news outlet: “I think this is an opportunity where, given the man-made nature of the extinction of the dodo, man could not only bring the dodo back, but also fix what was done to parts of the ecosystem to reintroduce them.

“There’s a lot of benefits from a conservation perspective, in terms of what we can learn from rewilding.”

The scientists are planning on creating a “proxy” version of the extinct bird.

That means they’ll use edited DNA so the new dodo won’t be an exact clone of the original one.

Beth Shapiro and Ben Lamm are working on the project.

The proposed dodo-like creature will be made using genomes painstakingly sequenced from real dodo specimens.

There will be an attempt to put these together with genomes from close relatives of the flightless bird.

Together, this could create a full set of genomes that can be edited and used to create the right set of genetic ingredients for a new dodo.

Shapiro said: “The hope is that we can use, first, comparative genomics so we can get at least one, and hopefully more, dodo genomes that we can use to look and see how dodos are similar to each other, and different from things like the solitaire.”

The last dodo sighting is believed to have been in 1662. Picture: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.

The Rodrigues solitaire is another type of extinct bird and a close relative to the dodo.

Although the process of gene editing and creating the new animal will likely take a very long time, the researchers look forward to releasing the animal into the wild.

They hope to put their new version of the dodo on the island of Mauritius, where its long-lost ancestor once called home.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Bioscientists working to ‘de-extinct’ Dodo bird and release it back into the wild