PROLOGUE
1. Piers Anthony, The Source of Magic (Xanth) (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979).
2. “A new organization, Revive and Restore, formed by the Long Now Foundation with the help of the National Geographic Society and advised by a group of respected scientists, has been created to examine the potential for a new branch of zoology: de-extinction.” Times (London), 8 March 2013, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/benmacintyre/article3708288.ece.
CHAPTER 2: SELECT A SPECIES
1. Svante Pääbo, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the leader of an international project to sequence the complete genome of a Neandertal, wrote an editorial in the New York Times in which he argues that as sentient beings, Neandertals have the same rights as humans and should not be cloned. His op-ed, “Neandertals Are People, Too,” was published on 24 April 2014.
CHAPTER 7: RECONSTRUCT PART OF THE GENOME
1. This is one of the most fascinating and potentially the longest-lasting impact of the Technology Review report: ben-Aaron states that while elephants have fifty-six chromosomes, mammoths have fifty-eight. In fact, we have no idea how many chromosomes a mammoth has, and we are unlikely to know the answer until a high-quality version of their genome has been sequenced and assembled. Nonetheless, the “fact” that mammoths have fifty-eight chromosomes is widely reported on the Internet. I can only assume the source is ben-Aaron’s article, as no reference or citation is ever provided.
1. This article, “Re-Wilding North America,” appeared in the 18 August 2005 edition of Nature. Josh Donlan is listed as the article’s only author, but a footnote points to a long list of notable conservation biologists including Harry Greene of Cornell University, Joel Berger of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Carl Bock and Jane Bock of the University of Colorado, David Burney of Fordham University, Jim Estes of UC Santa Cruz, Dave Foreman of the Re-wilding Institute, Paul Martin of the University of Arizona, Gary Roemer of New Mexico State University, Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico, and Michael Soulé of the Wildlands Project.
CHAPTER 11: SHOULD WE?
1. TEDxDeExtinction was organized by Ryan Phelan and Stewart Brand of Revive & Restore. All of the presentations are available from the Technology, Education, and Development (TED) Web site and from http://tedxdeextinction.org/.
2. Carl’s article was published in the April 2013 edition of National Geographic Magazine. In addition to his story, the feature includes some delightfully nostalgic photography by Robb Kendrick that depicts species that might be targets for de-extinction research.
3. I realize I am being overly harsh here. There have been several good articles written about de-extinction over the last several years. Carl Zimmer’s work in National Geographic Magazine, which I mention above, is excellent. Also, Nathanial Rich wrote a thoughtful and nuanced piece about de-extinction in the 2 March 2014 edition of the New York Times Magazine that I think is among the best of what has been presented thus far about de-extinction.
4. This quote is from Stewart’s “Point” in the “Point/Counterpoint” series in which he and Professor Paul Ehrlich agreed to participate. It was published on 13 January 2014 as part of Yale University’s Yale Environment 360.