Returning the Tasmanian tiger to life on Earth can seem to be a grace note of justice in a natural world that, on its own, can be 'nasty, brutish, and short,' as Thomas Hobbes phrased it. 'We're increasingly confident that the hurdles ahead are technological, not biological,' Professor Archer told The Guardian newspaper, adding that they've already begun work on cloning a Tasmanian tiger, which disappeared in the 1930s. But even a brief existence stirred excitement that this technique could lead to a way of recreating lost species. Professor Mike Archer says his team took tissue from a frog that had been dead and frozen since the 1970s and implanted it successfully in an egg from a closely related frog species. So if you heard a female gastric brooder croak, 'Excuse me while I clear my throat,' you stood back. It was not so named because it had the temperament of a Russell Crowe character, but because it gave birth through its mouth. The gastric brooder once lived in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia, and was declared extinct in 1983.
This week scientists at the University of New South Wales' Lazarus Project announced they have reproduced the genome - that bit of biological material that carries our genetic structure - of a gastric brooding frog. Does that give us a lot to brood about, too?
The gastric brooding frog may be coming back.
