# Recreating species through selective breeding: how far back can we go?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recreating-species-through-selective-breeding-how-far-back-can-we-go/640575>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 10, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recreating-species-through-selective-breeding-how-far-back-can-we-go/640575 "2012-11-10T13:51:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recreating-species-through-selective-breeding-how-far-back-can-we-go/640575/1 "2012-11-10T13:51:38Z")

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I was just reading about the [TaurOs\_Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TaurOs_Project), an effort to recreate the extinct [Aurochs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs), which died out over four hundred years ago.

Absent some kind of direct manipulation of DNA and/or recovery from frozen 10,000 year old carcasses and the like, could a similar approach be applied to other species, to recreate (say) the Dodo, the wooly mammoth, or australopithecene? Dinosaurs? What are the obstacles?

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**Author:** ![rsat3acr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@rsat3acr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsat3acr)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recreating-species-through-selective-breeding-how-far-back-can-we-go/640575/2 "2012-11-10T14:10:43Z")

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I don’t think this will produce an Auroch, maybe a similar animal, that is looks like an Auroch, but not an Auroch. I think the only way to “reproduce” a species would require a viable cell from the extinct species and clone like Dooly the sheep via somatic cell nuclear transfer. Don’t imagine there are very many viable cells of extinct species out there.

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**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2012, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recreating-species-through-selective-breeding-how-far-back-can-we-go/640575/3 "2012-11-10T14:19:44Z")

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You’re talking about [breeding back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeding_back).  
You couldn’t do it for dodos or mammoths since they have no living descendants to breed back from.