And it’s our responsibility to bring stories and to bring excitement to people in way that motivates them to think about the extinction crisis that’s going on right now,” said Beth Shapiro, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We’re clearly in the middle of an extinction crisis. They hope the project will open up new techniques for bird conservation.
Now, a team of scientists wants to bring back the dodo in a bold initiative that will incorporate advances in ancient DNA sequencing, gene editing technology and synthetic biology. They doomed the dodo, which showed no fear of humans, to extinction in the space of just a few decades. The arrival of sailors brought with them invasive species like rats and practices like hunting. No other animal is as inexorably linked with extinction as the dodo, an odd-looking flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean until the late 17th century.
