Jeff Sargent
Bakalar,
Nicholas. "Last Mammoths Spent Final Years on Solitary Island." The
New York Times. The New York Times, 04 May 2015. Web. 05 May 2015.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/science/last-mammoths-spent-final-years-on-solitary-island.html?ref=science>.
In the article Last Mammoths Spent Final Years on Solitary
Island by Nicholas Bakalar tells about a researching breakthrough about the
extinction of mammoths. Scientists on
the topic used two forms of DNA, one from a 45,000,000 year old piece of wooly
mammoth tissue, and a 4,300 year old tooth.
Because of these findings, they found out an important factor to why mammoths
are currently extinct. They discovered
that inbreeding in mammoths were a large role of the disappearance of the
animal. Even scientists such as the
senior author of the new report, Love Dalen, were unaware of all the exact
causes for the extinction of the wooly mammoth.
But, after this new discovery, they found another reason for the
extinction. “By sequencing the
4,300-year-old, we find it has a 20 percent lower amount of genetic diversity
than the older mammoth and a 28-fold higher amount of inbreeding,” said Dr.
Dalen. Now, there is a possibility that
scientists can compare the genomes of the mammoth to an elephant, and even
possibly create a mammoth. Although this
is definitely not guaranteed, it is still a cool and fun thing to know.
This article itself doesn’t necessarily
affect people’s lives in the world today.
Although, the outcome of this article could possibly change human life
on Earth. These scientists are talking
about taking the genomes from mammoths and elephants and creating a real life
mammoth. Just imagine, this could be the
first step into creating new forms of already extinct and endangered animals. With this technological research and practice,
we could bring back things such as dodo birds, the wooly rhino, and possibly
even dinosaurs. Although the thought of
this is quite the stretch to if it is actually possible, it is a cool thing to
hear about and follow.
I think that Nicholas Bakalar did
a good job writing this article, but I feel like he can advance it
further. First off, the article wasn’t very
capturing, and didn’t really have something to hook the audience with. I feel that if he used a better title and
description, portraying the possibility of bringing a mammoth back to earth,
then the article would be a lot more popular.
I had no idea that the article was going to be about the recreation of
mammoths until I read about it in some of the last paragraphs. On the plus side, I liked how he used direct
quotes from a scientist, which better help the audience understand the
information given. I think that this
article was well written, and I feel that this is a topic that could be very
important to human life.
Jeff's review of "Mammoths Spent Final Years on Solitary Island" was overall very thorough. I like the topic choice in general, because extinction of wildlife is a never-ending problem that we continually struggle to confront, and I think it is very interesting the various ways people try to solve this problem. I also think that it was great how he did in fact acknowledge the lack of profound impact on modern-day life. Although this is incredibly interesting and cool to know, it has no real impact on modern day civilization. Also, I think the way he connected the technology to other things was great. He acknowledged that it was indeed a stretch to make animals from genomes, but it also could happen in retrospect. Despite all of his pluses, I think he could have solicited more professional opinions. There were very few opinions of experts, and although this may be the article's fault, he still had a lack of opinions. Also, I don't think that the title connected well to the rest of the article. Most of the article was about genetic codes, and not about the final days of the wooly mammoth. I learned about the scientific advancement in genetics so much in this article and how it is being put to use.
ReplyDeleteJeff's review of "Mammoths Spent Final Years on Solitary Island" was overall very thorough. The language was clear and the facts were presented in a reader friendly way. The author of this review was also good about using outside sources to back up their evidence. Unfortunately, the writer did not include evidence from people who might refute this theory. Also, scientists were not used to bring in other theories regarding the extinction of mammoths. I was impressed by the article and it’s content because it was a topic that I never thought about. It made sense and it makes me think about the possibilities of other animals or possible human communities who might have “killed themselves off” through inbreeding.
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