[IN THE NEWS] Back From The Dead

No, this isn't an article about Zombies in After the Bomb. Instead, we're talking about bringing extinct species back into the world.

We know that in the 2nd Edition reboot of AtB, the world had entered a Golden Age of Bio-Engineering and that a few mutant "throwback" species had been brought back from extinction (ie. Passenger Pigeons, Egyptian Cats, etc.). While many of these throwbacks in the game were not necessarily pure blood reincarnations of the extinct species, a new article was posted on NewScientist.com yesterday, Ten extinct beasts that could walk the Earth again, suggests that it may be possible to bring back those species for which we are able to sequence their DNA:

"THE recipe for making any creature is written in its DNA. So last November, when geneticists published the near-complete DNA sequence of the long-extinct woolly mammoth, there was much speculation about whether we could bring this behemoth back to life.

Creating a living, breathing creature from a genome sequence that exists only in a computer's memory is not possible right now. But someone someday is sure to try it, predicts Stephan Schuster, a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and a driving force behind the mammoth genome project."

With the EGG's described in 2nd Edition AtB it is most likely that a wolly mammoth would have been, if they had an EGG large enough, brought back from extinction, and that they may, in the game, be roaming the northern wilderness as the glaciers slowly make their way south.

There are so many other extinct species that people have wanted to bring back, not to mention that there are so many species that go extinct every year and others that are dangerously near the edge. Luckly, in the realm of RPG's, we are not limited to those considerations (land, money, and ethics) that would limit what we can do in real life, so let your imagination run wild and bring back something extinct in your next game.