A Texas-based biotech company is actively working to bring back something very close to a woolly mammoth, with a target date of 2028 for its first calf. It won’t be a perfect clone of the animal that roamed the Arctic thousands of years ago, but rather a hybrid: an Asian elephant genetically edited to carry mammoth traits like thick hair, extra fat, and cold-adapted blood. Whether this ambitious timeline holds, and whether the result truly counts as a “mammoth,” depends on clearing several enormous scientific hurdles that no one has solved before.
What’s Actually Being Built
Colossal Biosciences, founded by CEO Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church, describes itself as the world’s first de-extinction company. It has raised $555 million in venture capital at a valuation of roughly $10.3 billion, making this the most well-funded de-extinction effort in history. The company is also working on the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo, but the mammoth is its flagship project.
The plan is not to reconstruct a woolly mammoth from scratch. Scientists don’t have a complete, intact mammoth genome to work with. Instead, they’re starting with living Asian elephant cells, the mammoth’s closest relative, and using CRISPR gene-editing technology to swap in mammoth genes one by one. The initial targets are genes that control blood hemoglobin (so the blood carries oxygen efficiently in extreme cold), ear size (mammoths had small ears to reduce heat loss), subcutaneous fat, and hair growth. The genetic divergence between Asian elephants and woolly mammoths is estimated at about 65% of the divergence between African savanna and Asian elephants, meaning the two species are relatively close on the evolutionary tree but still separated by millions of years.
The resulting animal would look and function like a mammoth in key ways, but genetically it would still be mostly Asian elephant. Scientists sometimes call it a “mammoth proxy” or “cold-adapted elephant” to be precise about what it is.
Where the Science Stands Now
In March 2024, Colossal announced a significant breakthrough: the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from Asian elephants. These are cells reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells, capable of developing into any cell type in the body. This had been notoriously difficult for elephants, and Oliver Ryder, director of conservation genetics at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, called it “a great advancement.”
Why does this matter? These stem cells are the starting material for the entire project. Scientists can edit mammoth genes into these cells, then use cloning techniques to create embryos. Without this step, the rest of the pipeline doesn’t work. The achievement also has value beyond de-extinction: the cells can be used to study elephant biology, reproduction, and disease, which benefits conservation of living elephants.
The next steps are harder. Colossal’s plan involves creating gene-edited embryos from those stem cells and transferring them into surrogate Asian elephant mothers, which would carry the pregnancies for about 22 months. No one has successfully cloned an elephant before, and cloning in general has a high failure rate across species. The company has discussed developing artificial womb technology as an alternative, but that remains experimental for an animal this large.
The 2028 Target
Colossal has publicly stated it wants to produce its first woolly mammoth hybrid calf by 2028. That timeline is aggressive by any measure. Between now and then, the team needs to successfully edit multiple genes into elephant stem cells, generate viable embryos through cloning, either implant those embryos into elephant surrogates or develop an artificial womb that can sustain a 22-month elephant pregnancy, and then have the calf survive birth and early life.
Each of those steps involves unsolved problems. Cloning attempts in other species often result in miscarriage, stillbirth, or animals born with serious health problems. The only other de-extinction birth on record, a Pyrenean ibex (bucardo) cloned in 2003, died within minutes due to deformed lungs. The science has advanced considerably since then, but elephant reproduction is exceptionally complex, and the margin for error is slim.
Even optimistic observers treat 2028 as aspirational. A more realistic reading is that the first calf could arrive sometime in the late 2020s or early 2030s, assuming the remaining technical problems are solvable at all.
Why Bring Back the Mammoth
The ecological argument centers on permafrost. Arctic permafrost stores vast amounts of carbon, and as it thaws due to climate change, it releases greenhouse gases that accelerate warming further. This creates a feedback loop. The theory, tested in part at Pleistocene Park in Siberia, is that large herbivores like mammoths could help break this cycle.
During winter, large grazers trample snow, compacting it and reducing its insulating effect. This exposes the ground to frigid air, keeping the soil frozen. In summer, grazing animals maintain grasslands instead of shrubby tundra. Grass reflects more sunlight back into space than dark shrubs do, cooling the surface. Together, these effects could help stabilize permafrost in ways that matter for global climate.
A 2024 study in Scientific Reports assessed whether today’s Arctic could actually support a population of mammoth-like animals. Focusing on Alaska’s North Slope, including the Beaufort Coastal Plain, Brooks Foothills, and surrounding regions, researchers estimated the area could sustain densities of up to 0.38 mammoths per square kilometer based on available forage from grasses, wildflowers, and deciduous shrubs. That’s a modest density, but across the vast Arctic landscape, it adds up.
The Case Against De-Extinction
Critics raise three main objections. The first is animal welfare. Cloning is an imprecise process that frequently produces suffering: miscarriages, stillbirths, genetic abnormalities, and chronic disease. The surrogate mothers, who are endangered Asian elephants, would bear the physical burden of failed attempts. Even a healthy calf faces an uncertain life, raised without a mammoth herd to teach it mammoth behavior, in a world it wasn’t born into.
The second objection is what ethicists call hubris. Ecosystems are extraordinarily complex, and introducing a species that hasn’t existed for thousands of years carries unpredictable risks. The Arctic has changed since mammoths disappeared. There’s no guarantee a mammoth proxy would fill the same ecological role, and if it became an invasive presence rather than a restorative one, the consequences could be difficult to reverse.
The third concern is practical: money. Conservation is chronically underfunded. The hundreds of millions flowing into de-extinction could protect enormous amounts of habitat or fund breeding programs for species that are endangered right now. Skeptics argue that reviving a single charismatic species does little for biodiversity compared to what the same resources could accomplish through conventional conservation.
What “Coming Back” Actually Means
Even if everything goes right, the animal born from this project will not be a woolly mammoth in the way most people imagine. It will be a genetically modified Asian elephant carrying a selection of mammoth traits chosen by scientists. It won’t have a mammoth’s full genome, its full behavioral repertoire, or the social learning passed down through generations of mammoth herds. It will be something new: an engineered animal designed to approximate a species that vanished roughly 4,000 years ago.
Whether that counts as “bringing back the mammoth” is partly a scientific question and partly a philosophical one. If the goal is a shaggy, cold-tolerant elephant that can graze Arctic tundra and compact snow, the project could plausibly deliver that within the next decade. If the goal is resurrecting the actual species, with its full genetic complexity and ecological relationships intact, that remains beyond current technology.
The honest answer is that something mammoth-like may walk the Arctic again in your lifetime. It just won’t be the same animal that disappeared.