--- title: Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life | TIME description: 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." canonical: https://time.com/video/7mURxfr4/ og:title: Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life og:description: 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." og:url: https://time.com/video/7mURxfr4/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/7mURxfr4/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life twitter:description: 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." twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/7mURxfr4/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Waking the Dead: Bringing Extinct Species Back to Life > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## 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."_ --- Jul 27, 2023 4:17 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [A Tortoise Species That Was Feared Extinct Was Found in the Galapagos](/video/rfE7w7Rd/) ### A Tortoise Species That Was Feared Extinct Was Found in the Galapagos [Conservationists Say They Spotted ‘Extinct’ Dolphin in Yangtze River](/video/d3bmiO5d/) ### Conservationists Say They Spotted ‘Extinct’ Dolphin in Yangtze River [TIME Explains: Why Bees Are Going Extinct](/video/dZuiDonP/) ### TIME Explains: Why Bees Are Going Extinct --- ## 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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