Multiple spoiler alert!
In the classic film Jurassic Park (JP), disasters unfurl at a theme park populated with dinosaurs cloned from reptile DNA in mosquitoes fossilized in amber, with modern frog DNA filling in gaps.
Douglas Preston's new novel Extinction – really De-extinction — riffs on the 1993 Steven Speilberg epic, substituting in genetic material from a half dozen mammals from the Pleistocene, circa 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago. The animals were cloned from DNA in tiny, preserved ear bones, and doctored a bit.
The resulting animals roam a resort nestled into the remote Colorado Rockies, thanks to biotech company Erebus. At sundown, guests gather at a panoramic window in the lodge's lobby to watch the behemoth herbivores wander to a stream, the mammoths especially beloved.
But unlike Jurassic Park's out-of-control carnivores, the Ice Age bestiary boasts only mellow vegetarians: Irish elk, giant beavers and ground sloths, glyptodonts (armadillos), and woolly rhinoceri and mammoths. The rhino is about the size of a Trader Joe's!
To continue reading, go to Genetic Literacy Project, where this post first appeared.