find a preserved specimen of any species in thepermafrostis always exciting , but now researchers want to take their findings to a new degree . A team in Russia has recently performed a necropsy on a bison thought to day of the month back 8,000 years , and now they are hoping to clone the specimen .
The bison was discovered in the summer of 2022 , in the Khaastaakh area in the Verkhoyansk region of Russia , after which the specimen was donated to the Mammoth Museum Laboratory of North - Eastern Federal University ( NEFU ) in Yakutsk . The specimen is uncomplete – but the caput , forelimbs , and part of the dresser have been preserved remarkably well .
recall to be around a year and a half to two years old , the bison specimen underwent a necropsy where samples of muscles , skin , and soft tissue were taken and the brain was removed .
Researchers performing an necropsy on a bison. Image Credit: Svetlana PAVLOVA / NEFU Press Service
While it is unmanageable to ascertain the age of the bison , premature bison let on in 2009 and 2010 have been dated to around 8 - 9 thousand years ago . It is thought that the results of the sample tests which involveradiocarbonstudies and microbiological investigation will shed sparkle on the environmental science of the bison ’s habitat and render information about its geological age .
“ Preliminarily , this is a young individual 1.5 - 2 geezerhood erstwhile . When she croak has not yet been make . The geological age of the bison discovered in 2009 and 2010 was 8 - 9 thousand geezerhood , the biological age is about 2 calendar month and 4 - 4.5 old age , respectively , " said Maxim Cheprasov , head of the NEFU Mammoth Museumin a statement .
chip in that the tissues have been so well keep in the permafrost , some of the team conceive it could be possible to use theDNAto clone the specimen .
The brain of the bison was removed for testing. Image Credit: Svetlana PAVLOVA / NEFU Press Service
“ We are working with a unique find that could be cloned in the future thanks to selected materials . This becomes possible thanks to the joint oeuvre with a firm team of leading scientists of the North - Eastern Federal University , ” said NEFU Professor , Director of the UAE Biotechnology Research Foundation Hwang Woo Sok .
It is worth noting that Hwang Woo Sok lost his lieu at Seoul National University in South Korea after his results were found to be fraudulent and near served meter in prison house for breaking medical value orientation regulations around the collectionof human ball cells . The team has also been involved in some controversy after it was revealed that a bear also discover in the permafrost that was thought to particular date back 22,000 years was in fact only3,500 years old .
Cloning any animal is always a complicated process , and attempting to do so on an animal that has been buried under the ice for potentially thousands of year do the entire enterprise a mess more difficult .
" To make cloning possible , one call for to observe intact chromosome , but what we see even in the best specimens is that each chromosome is fragmentize into millions of pieces , " paleogeneticist Love Dalén , who is not involved in the report , said in a financial statement inLive Science . " In my view , it is more likely that you’re able to flip a coin and get head a thousand times in a dustup than it is to find an intact chromosome from a specimen that is thousands of years older . "
In 2022 , scientistscloned mouse successfully from halt - dried cellular telephone , but these cells can only be frozen for nine months , not a potential nine thousand age .
