One of the very first things I ever posted about on this very blog, all the way back in The Year 2000, was a story about how a group of scientists were trying to help save an endangered species of bovine called the gaur by using modern-day cattle as surrogates for clones. That post has long since been shelved in the dusty attic of offline archives, but here’s a reprint of the original news story from 2000 that talks about the attempt, and here, sadly, is the follow-up from 2001 that reports that the gaur they bred only lived for a couple of days.
There are no further reports of any more attempts to breed gaurs via cloning, but now, according to this London Telegraph article, a group of Italian scientists are trying to resurrect another ancient bovine, the auroch, by a process they term “back-breeding”. Aurouchs were wild elephant-sized bovines that were indigenous to Europe, Africa and Western Asia and survived as a species until the 1600s in Europe. A domestic version of the auroch, called Heck cattle, still exist and are being used along with other related animals to try to recreate a distinct auroch breed. The scientists say that have been able to map the genome of the auroch and they believe that their breeding program can come up with an animal that has the same genetic makeup as the ancient animal. Critics argue that all they’ll get is a simulacrum. A huge, dangerous simulacrum with a pair of horns that’ll rip your guts out:
