DALLAS — The place where the dead may be brought back to life is a drab, single-story building in an office park next to a semitruck lot. Inside, between rows of incubators and microscopes, Beth Shapiro and her team are attempting a feat straight out of science fiction: reviving the dodo, a bird that’s been extinct for more than three centuries. A growing group of scientists is trying to bring back extinct animals, an idea that is drawing closer than ever due to recent advances in gene editing.
Shapiro, one of the world’s leading experts on finding and decoding strains of genetic material from long-lost animals, has already done more than anyone to reveal the secrets of the dodo, the flightless icon of extinction that inspired generations to protect still-living species from vanishing. Yet in the not-so-distant past, Shapiro didn’t see why the dodo needed to make a comeback. Like many skeptics of the idea of “de-extinction,” she once thought there was no point to bringing back an extinct animal with no home to go to.
DALLAS — The place where the dead may be brought back to life is a drab, single-story building in an office park next to a semitruck lot. Inside, between rows of incubators and microscopes, Beth Shapiro and her team are attempting a feat straight out of science fiction: reviving the dodo, a bird that’s been extinct for more than three centuries. A growing group of scientists is trying to bring back extinct animals, an idea that is drawing closer than ever due to recent advances in gene editing.