With Jurrasic Park getting ready for its April 5 re-release in 3-D, both scientists and observers are atwitter with what it would be like to bring animals back from extinction. What once seemed like fantasy science fiction could become science reality.
Advances in cloning and DNA sequencing have made recreating extinct species a real possibility. Several research groups around the world are now pursuing resurrections—from the passenger pigeon, which vanished a century ago, to the mammoth, which has been gone for millennia. Are these efforts stunts or ideas worth taking seriously?
Watch here to see Stewart Brand, the creator of the Whole Earth catalog, discuss the possibility of bringing species back from extinction at the 2012 Aspen Environment Forum.
