Will Mammoths Walk the Earth Again?

Mammoths and mastodons were distant relatives to the elephant. There is a great deal of debate over when they became extinct and why.

Mammoths and mastodons are less mysterious to us than dinosaurs because we can study their preserved bodies. Several of the creatures have even been found, complete with flesh, frozen in the ice in Siberia, North America and northern Europe. Dogs have even found this flesh good to eat. Much of the ivory available today has been taken from the dead mammoths. Mammoths seem almost, but not quite, part of our world. That could change.

Soviet scientists removed living sperm from some mammoths that had fallen into an icy pond and been almost perfectly preserved since their deaths. The sperm was used to fertilize nine elephant eggs. The eggs were then re-implanted in the elephants. Only one of the nine survived until birth. The half mammoth-half elephant was sterile, small and covered with shaggy yellow hair. Soviet scientists are continuing their research. They hope to find and fertilize mammoth eggs with mammoth sperm. Elephants would be used as surrogate mothers. If they are successful, mammoths might again walk our earth!

The history of life on earth shows that the further back in time we go, the more kinds of creatures existed. This is the opposite of what we would expect if evolution were true. However, it is exactly what we would expect based on the Bible’s account of creation.

Genesis 1:24
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”

Prayer:
I thank You, Lord, for the rich variety of life that surrounds us. I pray that we might do a better job of using extinct creatures to glorify You rather than using them to call Your work of creation into question. Amen.

Notes:
“What Is a Fossil?” The Rich, Rich Desert. Student Handout. Photo: Skeleton of Columbian mammoth, Mammuthus columbi, in the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles, California. Taken by WolfmanSF and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.