Timeline check for 2040. Colossal's stated target is a calf born to an elephant surrogate by late 2028; in February 2026 Ben Lamm said the mammoth cell lines are largely edited and that the company is about two and a half years into elephant IVF and ovum retrieval, which has to work before any pregnancy can start, and Asian elephant gestation is about 22 months, so a 2028 birth needs an established pregnancy by early 2027. Two things are easy to forget: the woolly mouse of March 2025 was a mouse carrying mammoth-associated edits, and the dire wolves announced in April 2025 were grey wolves carrying 20 edits in 14 genes, so what arrives, if it arrives, will be an Asian elephant with a mammoth gene set rather than a mammoth, and de-extincted will be argued over the way it was for the wolves. The 2040 horizon allows several more attempts after 2028, which is why I would put more weight on an edited elephant being born by then than on anyone agreeing it is a mammoth. The canids got there first partly because wolves and dogs have some of the best-annotated mammalian genomes outside mice and people, which is also why dogs are the species for the first lifespan trials of anti-aging drugs (mine): https://w0lph.github.io/k9/trials/

Can we define what this would mean? Yes as in 20 gene edits from an elephant is very different than yes closer to a wooly mammoth than an elephant

@ChristianDeAngelis3deb @Ivan I 2nd this. If the creation is closer genetically to an elephant vs a Mammoth, I don't think it should count. Can you please clarify this?

Would the same sort of "de extinction" as the dire wolf where a few genes are inserted into a distant relative count as de extinction for the purposes of resolving this?

https://time.com/7274542/colossal-dire-wolf/

The Return of the Dire Wolf

Colossal Biosciences has genetically engineered the first dire wolf to live in over 10,000 years. Here's what that means for other extinct species.

https://x.com/Jiankui_He/status/1900547519152894003

Got wooly mice

https://x.com/Nature/status/1896919120077017395

https://x.com/geochurch/status/1879642932078404093

ununalived

The Woolly mammoth could be brought back from extinction in just four years

here's a related market for betting on specific project milestones: https://manifold.markets/ASomewhatRudeParakeet/what-will-happen-during-the-woolly

Is a single individual enough? What will be considered as a wooly mammoth? Genetic similarity? Phenotypic similarity? Clone?