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People have been sad about driving animals into oblivion for nearly as long as we have been eradicating them. And in recent centuries humans have tried to address the problem.

Since the nineteen-eighties, various attempts have been made to see if it might be possible, somehow, to reverse the process. In theory, at least, the technological know-how that helped us extirpate so much wildlife could be deployed to bring back a few of our victims. Humans who are pursuing this goal are essentially asking for something that nature has never provided: a do-over.

Ben Lamm is a forty-three-year-old serial entrepreneur who has already had five “exits”—acquisitions of startups by other companies. He lives in Dallas; his estimated net worth is $3.7 billion. Lamm is dyslexic, and when he was younger he found reading difficult. He tended toward graphic novels and video games, but over time he taught himself, he says, to “read for concepts.” Among the interesting figures he has run across is George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Church has endorsed using gene therapy to improve human resistance to radiation, thus facilitating interplanetary travel; he has also written about the possibility of cloning Neanderthals back into existence.

In 2020, Lamm and Church agreed to create a for-profit company, called Colossal Biosciences, whose showcase product would be the deëxtinction of animals.

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