My husband sent me the link to the TEDxDeExtinction website when he noticed that one of the suggested "Candidates" for deExtinction was the Easter Island Palm, Paschalococos disperta (Rapa Nui Palm).

National Geographic hosted the first public event on TEDxDeExtinction just this past March in Washington, DC. For cocoid lovers and especially those who get down to the seed level, I thought this site was worth bringing to everyone's attention. Now an Easter Island Palm would be the true collector's palm!

Has anyone heard of the Revive & Restore projects before? I see that Ben Novak will be working on passenger pigeon DNA and de-extinction in Beth Shapiro's group at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I think this might be the first project of the Revive & Restore group.

http://longnow.org/revive/tedxdeextinction/

Edited April 5, 201313 yr by WestCoastGal

I just noticed a thread on John Dransfield's Rattan here on the forum. I had just come across his name when I was posting about the Easter Island Palm as he assigned the species on Easter Island a new genus (it was formerly Jubaea Disperta).

This is from the Palm & Cycad Societies of Australia's website: http://www.pacsoa.org.au/palms/Paschalococos/disperta.html

What a great project! I hope they can bring back at least the sea cow and the Rapa Nui Palm. These are extinctions that human caused, the least we can do is to undo them if it's within our power to do so.

Just about 70% of the palms I grow are threatened in their native habitat. The sheer loss of bio-diversity that faces us is staggering. Throw in the accelerating climate change, and what are we going to be left with?

Very interesting!

How do you think they can revive this palm? Any seeds left?

Regards Andrew

Very interesting!

How do you think they can revive this palm? Any seeds left?

Regards Andrew

Watch the video. It's done via genetic cloning. There is enough genetic material remaining for some of the most recently extinct species to be able to reconstruct the genome and using a cloning process.

Yes. In which stadium they will use the reconstructed DNA? They will inject it to female Jubaea gametes?

I've never heard of plant cloning.

Regards Andrew

Yes. In which stadium they will use the reconstructed DNA? They will inject it to female Jubaea gametes?

I've never heard of plant cloning.

Regards Andrew

Not sure what the question is, you start with a plant stem cell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_stem_cell) and you inject the proper DNA. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_cloning. Jubaea would probably be the place where you'd get stem cells in this case.

This is seemingly too good to be true! I am researching and this one is on the 'potentially possible' list. Too cool!

That is simply amazing .Thank you for sharing

always sad to know that a palm somewhere both present and past has been put to poor use