5/28/2002: Tasmanian tiger to be cloned

Oh ghod - first a fark image, then a K5 image, now a Slashdot image. Well not really; Slashdot doesn't have an image on their story!

The official caption:

Australian Museum Director Professor Michael Archer takes a close look at an 1866 Tasmanian Tiger embryo in Sydney May 28, 2002 that scientists have used to successfully replicate some of the animals genes using DNA extracted from the specimen. Scientists say they hope to clone a Tasmanian Tiger in 10 years if they are successful in constructing large quantities of all the genes of the extinct animal and sequencing sections of the genome to create a genetic library of Tasmanian Tiger DNA. The animal, also known as a thylacine, was a dog-like carnivorous marsupial with stripes on its back that lived on the Australian island state of Tasmania before it was hunted down by farmers who blamed it for killing sheep. The last known tiger died in 1936.

I'm all for this. Anything that allows humans to un-do (or at least partially reverse) one of their big fuckups is worth considerable time and money.

I gotta get photoshop.

Lock your doors!, these are snowballs dogs

Wow, like start running now, these things are cool.

Guess i will need to redefine 'extinct' again in my head.

Anyone know if that skeleton pictured is a young animal or is that as big as they get?

Jaguar's ass will be extinct if this gets loose.

To clone or not to clone, that is the question posed by this Australian Museum Website.

Bah, its in tasmania, tasmina is the deep south of australia, except we were smart and seperated it from the mainland so we can pretend we don't own it. Been all over the papers here, should be interesting....