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ANCIENT DNA. "DNA has been reported to have been isolated from a variety of organisms up to a hundred million years old ... however, that many experimental artifacts are associated with the study of ancient DNA and in several cases the DNA purported to have been of ancient origin has been shown to be due to contamination." http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.1999.10011118 View in LinkedIn

US CROP DIVERSITY. "Over 90% of the varieties grown 100 years ago are no longer in commercial production ... In 1903, US seed catalogs listed 408 pea varieties; only 25 can be found now ... and by 1970, just two pea varieties comprised 96% of the US commercial crop. 71% of US corn acreage in 1991 was planted to just six varieties." http://people.oregonstate.edu/~muirp/cropdiv.htm View in LinkedIn

DNA SEQUENCING: "Coddington likened the improvement in sequencing technology to the dawn of commercial spaceflight over the past several years. "Think about the NASA program of the early '60s—it cost billions of dollars to get a couple of people to the moon, and now we're doing boutique spaceflight." http://lnkd.in/dtVxkW6 View in LinkedIn

"CROP DIVERSITY is part of the biological diversity and contributes towards achieving food security, poverty alleviation, environmental protection and sustainable development. Crop diversity is being eroded rapidly ... Genetic variation ... is essential for crop improvement." http://lnkd.in/dZ4Q-nq View in LinkedIn

LANDMARK: 1995 FIRST GENOME SEQUENCED. "The first genome was sequenced (of Haemophilus influenzae) in 1995. While it once cost six figures and took many years to fully sequence a genome, it can now be done in a matter of days for" a thousand dollars, (since 2014). http://lnkd.in/dtVxkW6 View in LinkedIn

TREE OF LIFE AND MASS EXTINCTIONS. "The history of life is not necessarily progressive; it is certainly not predictable. The earth's creatures have evolved through a series of contingent and fortuitous events." (Harvard's Stephen J Gould). http://lnkd.in/dR7wAuA View in LinkedIn

"THE REVIVE AND RESTORE PROJECT collaborated with Russian researcher Sergey Zimov, who has already created "an experimental preserve in Siberia called Pleistocene Park, which he hopes to populate with woolly mammoths." Think Jurassic Park, except in Siberia. http://lnkd.in/d376uZD View in LinkedIn

THE ONE PERCENT OF SURVIVORS. "Well over 99% of the species that have ever lived have become extinct." http://lnkd.in/dQ53khR View in LinkedIn

JURASSIC PARK PREDICTED the emergent ability to de-extinct past species. The 1990 book by Michael Crichton, later adapted by Spielberg as a film, was ahead of the technology curve, as the ability to resurrect extinct species was only first attempted in 2003 with the Pyrenean Ibex (but the offspring did not survive). http://lnkd.in/d-xMhvm View in LinkedIn

NOAH'S SPACESHIP. "Takehito Kaneko, associate professor at Kyoto University: “This may sound like a dream, but we could in future take genetic information into space.” It's a radical plan that would do away with the need for a massive Noah's Ark-style spaceship; genetic material could be regenerated in situ." http://lnkd.in/dF5RhVX View in LinkedIn