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The woolly mammoth1 was a very large elephant-like mammal that lived on Earth several thousand years ago. Some mammoths grew to be four meters high and the largest weighed almost nine tons. Both male and female mammoths had very large tusks2 and walked on every continent except Australia and South America. Sadly, these giant creatures became extinct.
The last mammoths lived as recently as 4,000 years ago and their well-preserved bodies can be found frozen in the tundra3 of Siberia. Because their bodies were so well protected from decay in the permafrost, their genetic5 material remained intact.
Scientists at Harvard University are researching ways to bring the mammoth back to life. According to these researchers, it is possible to program the Asian elephants’ genes6 with a mammoth’s genetic material. This is can be done because of a recent scientific developments in gene4 editing using a new tool called Crispr. Crispr allows scientists to cut out specific genes and replace them with different ones. They estimate that we will see a living mammoth in less than 10 years.
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1 mammoth | |
n.长毛象;adj.长毛象似的,巨大的 | |
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2 tusks | |
n.(象等动物的)长牙( tusk的名词复数 );獠牙;尖形物;尖头 | |
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3 tundra | |
n.苔原,冻土地带 | |
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4 gene | |
n.遗传因子,基因 | |
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5 genetic | |
adj.遗传的,遗传学的 | |
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6 genes | |
n.基因( gene的名词复数 ) | |
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