--- title: Taiwan: 4,800-Year-Old Fossil of Mother Embracing Baby Found description: Archaeologists discovered the fossilized remains of a mother cradling a baby in Taiwan, museum officials said canonical: https://time.com/4309095/fossil-mother-child-embrace-taiwan-archaeology/ author: Mark Rivett-Carnac article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-27T05:48:52.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:50:17.692Z article:section: Science og:title: 4,800-Year-Old Fossil of Mother Embracing Baby Found og:description: They are the earliest evidence of human activity in central Taiwan og:url: https://time.com/4309095/fossil-mother-child-embrace-taiwan-archaeology/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt93288012f525b1f2/698890d55f570f4173b20aac/rtx2br18.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2492 og:image:height: 1402 og:image:alt: A view of a fossil of a mother and baby in Taichung City og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 4,800-Year-Old Fossil of Mother Embracing Baby Found twitter:description: They are the earliest evidence of human activity in central Taiwan twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt93288012f525b1f2/698890d55f570f4173b20aac/rtx2br18.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 4,800-Year-Old Fossil of Mother Embracing Baby Found in Taiwan > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=40aa2a5d-88b2-4296-81c3-6a34f0e55a61&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life [Watch (HLS stream): Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/7mURxfr4.m3u8) (4:03)  _Published 2014-03-12. Conservationists and scientists have a saying, "extinction is forever." But soon biologists will clone long-gone animals in the hope to redefine that axiom to "DE-extinction is forever."_ by [Mark Rivett-Carnac](https://time.com/author/mark-rivett-carnac/) ## Mark Rivett-Carnac Apr 27, 2016 5:48 AM UTC by [Mark Rivett-Carnac](https://time.com/author/mark-rivett-carnac/) ## Mark Rivett-Carnac Apr 27, 2016 5:48 AM UTC Archaeologists have [discovered](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-fossils-idUSKCN0XN1WI) the fossilized remains of a mother cradling a baby in Taiwan, museum officials said Tuesday. The pair have held each other for 4,800 years. “When it was unearthed, all of the archaeologists and staff members were shocked,” said Chu Whei-lee, a curator at Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science, according to Reuters. “Why? Because the mother was looking down at the baby in her hands.” The mother and child were found during the excavation of 48 sets of remains from graves near the central city of Taichung. The fossils are believed to be the earliest evidence of human activity in central Taiwan. \[[_Reuters_](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-fossils-idUSKCN0XN1WI)\] ## Transcript [ SOUND ] [ MUSIC ] My name is Stuart Brand and I was trained as an ecologist. Conservation is about to take a turn because the technology was gonna allow us to use the DNA that's in the museum specimens and fossils to bring back extinct species [ MUSIC ] The passenger pigeon was around for 6 million years. And people remembered how amazing it was that these animals darkened the sky for hours at a time. There's these stories about these giant flocks blocking out the sun. And their wings sounding louder than thunder. We developed the techniques to hunt and net these birds and basically killed them all. And then it was really gone. When I was growing up, my mother said when the last one died in 1914 it broke America's heart. It was one of the prideful things that America had to show the world, and it was gone. This book. This is essentially the bible of passenger pigeon. I am currently the lead researcher for the deextinction project to bring the extinct passenger pigeon back to life. When I say, oh, we'll bring back a passenger pigeon, everyone goes, oh, my god, that's like Jurassic Park. And no, no, it's not. Not at all. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before. Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. I don't think a pigeon is going to, you know, pluck lawyers off of toilets. No. [ SOUND ]. Aah! [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So how we're actually going to go about deextinction. Every organism has a unique code in their genes. This one would be good I think. So these are actual DNA codes. From a chunk of a passenger pigeon foot. Now, if you can get DNA, then we can actually make it into a living cell. We're going to sequence its whole genome. We're gonna build from scratch the code that is a passenger pigeon, one gene at a time. Compare it to its closest relative. [ MUSIC ] Then we're gonna introduce DNA into the living cell of a band- tailed pigeon. And when you introduce an extinct animal's egg cell into a new mother, then you've changed the game. [ MUSIC ] Which has been done. The extinct Iranian Ibex was successfully cloned. That was the first deextinction. In this particular case, the animal only lived about ten minutes, but it was a proof of concept, and with further efforts, we hope, followed by everything from the passenger pigeon to the Tasmanian tiger. It's one of the most famous human- caused extinctions in the world. Benjamin, the last Tasmanian tiger, died in 1936. It was our direct activity that caused that extinction. For me, biotech is the future of conservation because our meddling is not unnatural. It is what species do. One of the things that gotten used to is the horrifying realization that extinction is forever. 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