Re: How is an elephant going to carry a wooly mammoth to term?

Hi Mabe,

This is a very good question - and also one that is very timely due to the recent publicity over finding the latest wooly mammoth.

It seems the scientific community is split regarding the pairing of a wooly mammoth and an asian elephant. At least in theory, a pairing of mammoth sperm and the egg of an Asian Elephant could produce an offspring. The mammoth has 58 chromosomes compared to the elephant's 56, but research in the early 1980's by M.I.T. scientist James Creak showed that there is less than a 5 percent difference between the genetic makeup of the two animals. The resulting creature would be half-mammoth, half-elephant, but over time, selective breeding of mammoth-elephant hybrids might produce a nearly pure mammoth.

If intact sperm isn't found from the Siberian Wooly Mammoth, the scientists would have to hope to retrieve a sample of mammoth DNA from the mammoth's bone marrow or internal organs. Such a sample might possibly be used to clone a mammoth via the nuclear-transfer method developed by Dr. Ian Wilmut at Scotland's Roslin Institute, the creator of Dolly, the cloned sheep. On the plus side, nuclear-transfer - true - cloning would produce an offspring that is genetically 100 percent mammoth. On the minus side, that method probably is an even more distant long shot than the elephant egg-insemination gambit.

So, as you can see everything is pretty much conjecture, and the possibility is remote but in theory it sounds like it might work. As far as the elephant carrying it to term one can only assume that because it is genetically similar to the mammoth then it would produce an offspring closely resembling its own, thus, carrying it to term would not pose that great a problem.

http://www.discovery.com/exp/mammoth/cloned.html

Keep an eye on the Discovery Channel in March 2000, they will be airing a two hour program about the mammoth expedition .

Mammoth fact of the day:

• Scientists believe it took mammoths up to 10- years before they were mature enough to separate from a herd !!!!!

• http://www.sedona.k12.az.us/socusd/bigpark/mammoth.html
• http://www.uen.org/Centennial/12AdaptationA.html
• http://trinculo.educ.sfu.ca/jot/wooly.html

June Wingert
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas