Could Anyone Bring an Extinct Animal Back to Life? And More Questions From Our Readers

Could a private citizen get hold of a genome and use it to bring an extinct animal back to life? —Anjali Rawal | Encinitas, California

There’s currently no way to bring an animal back from extinction based on genomic sequences alone. However, some lab groups and individuals hope to “bring back” extinct animals—including mammals, birds and amphibians—by modifying the genome of an existing species so the animal resembles an extinct relative and plays a similar ecological role. For instance, scientists with the Revive & Restore project have proposed using gene manipulation to create elephants that have the heavy coats of woolly mammoths. The same types of methods can be applied to currently endangered species; for example, adding genes to help a species cope with rising heat or survive an infection from an invasive pathogen. There are laws governing this kind of work. In the U.S., modifying existing species requires permits from federal agencies. —Robert Fleischer, head of genomics, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

Isn’t the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere helping plants grow—and doesn’t that offset global warming? —John Schantz | Nazareth, Pennsylvania

Yes, but only up to a point. Plants need several elements to live and grow, including carbon, which they usually draw from the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere can give most plants a boost in growth. Some of the extra carbon they absorb ends up in wood or soil, where it is locked away from the atmosphere for decades. However, climate change also causes droughts, flooding and fires, all of which endanger plants. What’s more, high temperatures have been shown to stifle the chemical processes involved in photosynthesis—for instance, hindering the enzymes that bind carbon dioxide to sugars. So while carbon dioxide does help plants grow, the extra carbon in the atmosphere has other effects that may eventually outweigh the benefits.  —Patrick Megonigal, senior scientist and deputy director, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

What were the earliest musical instruments? And were they used for entertainment? —Andrea Smith | Portland, Oregon

Drums may have been among the earliest human-made musical instruments, but they were likely made of animal skins and wood, which do not preserve very well. The oldest drum-like objects known to date are the 5,000-year-old Folkton Drums from England; they were carved from chalk and may have been used as measuring devices rather than musical instruments. The oldest agreed-upon musical instruments are flutes carved out of mammoth ivory and bird bones, found in multiple sites in Germany dating back as far as 42,000 to 43,000 years. Another possible flute from Slovenia, made from a cave bear femur, was dated to over 50,000 years ago and is suggested to have been made by Neanderthals. We don’t know how these flutes were used, but they seem to play a pentatonic scale, with five notes per octave. —Briana Pobiner, paleoanthropologist, National Museum of Natural History