Back from extinction

SINCE Jurassic Park first hit screens in the 1990s, scientists have wondered if we really could use gene editing to bring back some of the world’s most thrilling extinct species.

While the focus has been on frog-dinosaur hybrids and elephant-like woolly mammoths, a team of researchers say the Christmas Island rat could be the ideal test case.

Extinct for about 120 years, the researchers say they have been able to obtain almost all of the rat’s genome from preserved skin samples, and it shares about 95 per cent of its genome with the Norway brown rat, a living species.

Because of this, the researchers say that this might be the ideal test case to learn if we can use genes sequenced from preserved DNA of an extinct species combined with cells from a similar existing species to bring the dead back to life.