Ben Novak wants to bring back the passenger pigeon. The last living specimen died in 1914, but they ran amok through 19th century America, leaving hundreds of cadavers and plenty of DNA to pull from. Novak already has a pretty good roadmap for how it should look, thanks to the nearly identical rock pigeon genome, published in January. From there, he'll inject the new chromosomes into a pigeon ovacite through nuclear transfer (the same process used to clone Dolly the Sheep), and hopefully see a passenger pigeon grow up inside a rock pigeon egg. And just like that, the most famous extinction of the 20th century is undone. Like a magic trick, Novak will pull an extinct bird out of his sleeve. Continue reading…
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