Scientists plan the de-extinction“of dodo after 300 years and release it back into the wild

A de-extinc­tion com­pa­ny has announced plans to revive the dodo, which has been extinct for over 300 years.

Colos­sal Bio­sciences, which has already promised to bring mam­moths and Tas­man­ian tigers back to life, revealed yes­ter­day that the flight­less bird is join­ing its list of bring­ing back long-dead creatures.

“This announce­ment is just the begin­ning of the project,” says Beth Shapiro, senior pale­on­tol­o­gist and sci­en­tif­ic advi­so­ry board mem­ber at Colos­sal Bio­sciences, which has been study­ing dodos for decades.

Whether it’s sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to recre­ate the dodo remains to be seen, but with an addi­tion­al $150 mil­lion invest­ment and a new avian genome research group backed by Colos­sal Bio­sciences, it’s up to the challenge.

In 2002, Dr. Shapiro’s team announced that they had extract­ed a small por­tion of the bird’s DNA and dis­cov­ered the Dodo’s rel­a­tive, the Nico­bar pigeon, of Indi­a’s Andaman and Nico­bar Islands.

Last year, after 20 years of research, he announced that he had suc­ceed­ed in com­plete­ly recon­struct­ing the dodo’s genome (the DNA instruc­tion sys­tem inside the cell).

Recre­at­ing the dodo would prob­a­bly require genet­i­cal­ly engi­neer­ing the genome of a close­ly relat­ed organ­ism to resem­ble the dodo.

The new genome is then intro­duced into a close rel­a­tive’s egg and trans­ferred to a sur­ro­gate mother.

When a baby is born, it must be raised in spe­cial con­di­tions with the care and nutri­tious food it needs to thrive.

The final ver­sion of the dodo will come from a dove designed to be the size of a dodo,” explains Shapiro.

The co-founder of Colos­sal Bio­sciences said, “We’re not ready to start trans­fer­ring embryos to sur­ro­gates yet,” but the tech­nol­o­gy need­ed to make the com­pa­ny’s idea a real­i­ty is well underway.