Colossal Biosciences, the company that produced a trio of modern-day dire wolves, is expanding to a half-dozen species that it wants to bring back.
The latest extinct animal the so-called "de-extinction company" hopes to bring back is an African antelope known as a bluebuck. Native to southern Africa, the bluebuck had existed for at least 400,000 years before being driven to extinction about the year 1800, researchers found.
The bluebuck had a shiny blue-grey coat, striking horns, a unique facial pattern, and, compared to other antelope relatives, was smaller, standing at about four feet tall at the shoulder with horns reaching nearly two feet.
"People wrote about it and said that it is one of the most beautiful antelopes and beautiful animals they've ever seen," Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences, told USA TODAY. "It was highly iconic. It was a small population and it was really kind of this jewel of South Africa."
The first large African mammal to go extinct during recorded history, the bluebuck was hunted for its skin, and, like endangered antelope today, was killed for the bushmeat trade and threatened by habitat destruction. (The blueback went extinct before its home, the southwestern Cape of Africa, became part of the Union of South Africa in 1910, and later the Republic of South Africa in 1961.)
