The Long Now Foundation posted a story on February 4, 2016, describing a wonderful meeting I had the honour of participating in last summer at the International Centre for Life in Newcastle, U.K.. The meeting was organized and hosted by peerless peer and gifted author (most recently of The Evolution of Everything - How Ideas Emerge), Matt Ridley. Key inspirations were champions of deextinction Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan, along with Ben Novak, lead researcher for the Long Now Foundation's Revive & Restore Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) project. Together with an expert group of genomicists, geneticists, developmental biologists, ecologists, and others, we explored how the Great Auk (Pinguinis impennis) might be brought back from extinction. I contributed a legal and policy framework for reviving and reintroducing the Great Auk from oblivion.
The Great Auk is extinct. Long live the Great Auk!
