Ideas worth spreading

Bring back the woolly mammoth!

1,151,806 views | Hendrik Poinar • TEDxDeExtinction

It’s the dream of kids all around the world to see giant beasts walk the Earth again. Could -- and should -- that dream be realized? Hendrik Poinar talks about the next big thing: the quest to engineer a creature that looks very much like our furry friend, the woolly mammoth. The first step, to sequence the woolly genome, is nearly complete. And it’s huge.

It’s the dream of kids all around the world to see giant beasts walk the Earth again. Could -- and should -- that dream be realized? Hendrik Poinar talks about the next big thing: the quest to engineer a creature that looks very much like our furry friend, the woolly mammoth. The first step, to sequence the woolly genome, is nearly complete. And it’s huge.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxDeExtinction, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

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About the speaker

Hendrik Poinar

Evolutionary geneticist

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Hendrik Poinar is a geneticist and biological anthropologist who focuses on extracting ancient DNA. He currently has his sights set on sequencing the genome of the woolly mammoth -- and cloning it.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxDeExtinction, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.