7 Extinct Animals Science is Bringing Back to LIFE Right Now

[00:00:00]Science told you extinction was forever.

[00:00:03]That once an animal was gone, it was gone. No coming back. Well, science just proved itself wrong. Right now, in labs across the world, scientists are using ancient DNA, gene editing, and cloning to bring extinct animals back from the dead. And this is not some distant dream. One of the animals on this list is already alive right now, howling for the first time in over 10,000 years.

[00:00:31]Today, I am going to show you seven extinct animals that science is literally bringing back to life. Let's start with number seven. Number seven, the gastric brooding frog. This might be the strangest animal that ever lived.

[00:00:46]Not because of how it looked, because of how it gave birth. The southern gastric brooding frog was discovered in 1973 in Queensland, Australia. It was small, mostly aquatic, with big protruding eyes. But what made it famous was its reproduction. The mother swallowed her own fertilized eggs. Her stomach stopped producing acid and became a womb. 6 weeks later, she opened her mouth and up to 25 fully formed baby frogs came out.

[00:01:16]No other animal on Earth has ever done this. Scientists believe studying this frog could help treat stomach ulcers in humans. But within 10 years of being discovered, it was gone. It was declared extinct in 1983. A fungus wiped it out before we could even understand it.

[00:01:34]Then, Professor Mike Archer at the University of New South Wales launched the Lazarus Project. They took tissue from dead frogs that had been frozen in a regular deep freezer since the 1970s, 40 years, no special preservation, and the cell walls were still intact. In 2013, they successfully grew cloned embryos containing the extinct frogs DNA. The embryos only survived a few days, but the DNA of an animal dead for 30 years was alive again, dividing and growing. Time magazine named it one of the top 25 inventions of the year.

[00:02:14]Number six, the Pyrenean Ibex. This is the only animal in history to go extinct twice. The Pyreneian Ibex was a wild mountain goat from the Pyrenees between Spain and France. For centuries, hunters prized its curly horns. By the late 1990s, only one remained, a 13-year-old female named Celia. In January 2000, rangers found her body crushed beneath a fallen tree in Odessa National Park, extinct. But before she died, a veterinarian named Alberto Fernandez Arius had collected tissue from her ear.

[00:02:50]In 2003, scientists used those frozen cells to clone her. They implanted 57 embryos into surrogate goats, seven pregnancies, six miscarriages, and on July 30th, 2003, one surrogate gave birth. A baby Bicardo was born alive.

[00:03:09]For the first time in human history, an extinct animal breathed again. 7 minutes later, it died. A lung defect. The piranian ibeck became the first animal resurrected from extinction and the first to go extinct a second time. But that seven-minute window proved deextinction was possible. And it opened the door for everything that came after.

[00:03:34]Number five, the dodo. If there is one animal that represents extinction, it is the dodo. This flightless bird lived on Maitius. When sailors arrived in the 1600s, the dodo had no fear of humans.

[00:03:48]Within 80 years, it was gone. For over 300 years, the dodo has been the symbol of permanent loss. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences is changing that.

[00:04:00]The Dodo's closest living relative is the Nicabar pigeon. Colossal established a breeding colony in Texas. In September 2025, they achieved a world first, successfully growing pigeon primordial germ cells, [music] the reproductive precursor cells that become eggs or sperm. They have also created geneedited chicken surrogates that could carry dodo embryos. Colossal says they are on track to produce dodo embryos by the end of 2026.

[00:04:31]The bird that became a synonym for gone forever might not be gone much longer.

[00:04:37]Number four, the Tasmanian tiger. The striped marsupial once roamed Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. Farmers blamed it for killing sheep. From 1888 to 1909, the government paid bounties and over 2,000 were killed. The last one got legal protection in July 1936.

[00:04:59]59 days later, it died alone at Hobart Zoo. Left outside in harsh weather, forgotten. Now, Colossal has partnered with the University of Melbourne and in 2025 established Colossal Australia.

[00:05:13]They have assembled the most complete thyloine genome ever and recovered RNA from a specimen over a 100red years old.

[00:05:21]But here is the breakthrough. Colossal has successfully developed marsupial embryos to mid gestation inside an artificial uterus. No surrogate mother needed. If this works at scale, scientists could produce Tasmanian tiger young for reing without a single living host animal. Australia has the worst mamalian extinction rate in the world.

[00:05:43]The Tasmanian tiger could be the first step toward reversing that. Number three, the giant moa. Picture a bird that stands 12 feet tall, taller than a basketball hoop, heavier than three grown men. That was the South Island giant moa, the tallest bird that ever walked the earth. It went extinct about 600 years ago when Polynesian settlers arrived in New Zealand. The moa had never seen a hunter. It had no defense.

[00:06:13]In July 2025, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh invested $15 million to bring it back.

[00:06:23]Jackson owns one of the largest private collections of MOA bones in the world.

[00:06:27]The project is a collaboration with the Ingai Tahu Research Center, the main Maui tribe of southern New Zealand.

[00:06:34]Archaeologists are already extracting ancient DNA from MOA sub fossils found in caves. Ben Lamb, the chief executive officer of Colossal, says MOA hatchlings could be a reality within a decade. And yet, compared to what comes next, even the Emoa seems small.

[00:06:53]Number two, the dire wolf. Everything I have told you so far has been about plans, projects, possibilities. This one is different. This one is already done.

[00:07:05]On October 1st, 2024, a surrogate dog gave birth by a cesarian section in Texas. Two puppies, white fur, muscular [music] bodies, Romulus and Reis. 4 months later, a third was born, Khesi.

[00:07:21]These are dire wolves, the first living dire wolves in over 12,000 years, the world's first successfully de-extincted animals.

[00:07:30]>> [music] >> Researchers extracted DNA from a 13,000y old tooth and a 72,000-y old skull. They made 20 gene edits to greywolf cells using crisper and transferred those edited nuclei into dog egg cells. By their first birthday, Romulus and Reheis weighed over 80 lb. They flinch from humans. They retreat from caretakers.

[00:07:54]These are not dogs. They are not modern wolves. They are something the world has not seen in 10,000 years. Most people thought the dire wolf only existed in Game of Thrones. It was real. It lived during the Ice Age across North America.

[00:08:09]And now it is back. But the animal colossal is building next direwolf look small.

[00:08:16]Number one, the woolly mammoth. The biggest deextinction project ever attempted. The woolly mammoth stood over 11 ft tall and weighed more than 6 tons.

[00:08:27]Most disappeared about 10,000 years ago, but a small population survived on Wrangler Island until just 4,000 years ago. Mammoths were still alive while humans were building the pyramids.

[00:08:39]Colossal has compiled over 50 mammoth genomes, spanning 1.2 million years of evolution. The Asian elephant shares over 95% of its DNA with the mammoth.

[00:08:50]Scientists are editing roughly 85 mammoth genes into elephant cells.

[00:08:55][music] Genes for thick fur, fat deposits, smaller ears, and cold tolerance. They have created the world's first pur potent elephant stem cells and build a proof of concept called the colossal woolly mouse. The goal is to produce the first mammoth-like calf by 2028. Colossal co-founder George Church, a Harvard geneticist, has spent decades working toward this moment. If it works, a creature that has not walked the earth in 4,000 years will take its first breath before the end of this decade.

[00:09:28]So, there you have it.

[00:09:31]Seven animals. A frog that gave birth through its mouth. A mountain goat that went extinct twice. A bird that became a synonym for gone forever. A predator that got legal protection 59 days too late. A 12-oot bird backed by the director of Lord of the Rings, a dire wolf already alive in Texas, and a woolly mammoth that could be born before 2030.

[00:09:58]Science told us extinction was permanent. Science was wrong. Which of these animals are you most excited to see come back? Drop your answer in the comments and subscribe because the next species on Colossal's list has not been announced yet. When it is, you will want to be here.