De-Extinction: How to Clone a Mastodon

collage  2021  15″h, 30″w

Attempts to clone a mastodon by extracting DNA from excavated bones have not been successful, as the fragments are not viable. When searching the internet for visualizations of mastodon DNA, I found images that resemble skeletal mastodon feet, which I used as collage material. The overlaid drawing mimics a scientific diagram, with the addition of an elephantine genome representing a set of genetic changes that likely played important roles in woolly mammoth DNA. Images of the DNA fragments are used as the foreground and background and to resemble the leg bones, as if these fragments were themselves part of an excavated mastodon.

• Diagrams
• Hand colouring