Review of “Raising the Mammoth” (2019)

Moving picture, 50 minutes

Seen in 2020.

Seen with Swedish-language narration on SVT. I’ve not seen the rest of Lost Beasts of the Ice Age (2019).

Nominally George Church’s project of mammoth CRISPR de-extinction to prevent Siberian permafrost thawing. In actuality, an expedition to Siberia for a variety of more scientific purposes.

I gather that SVT picked this up in part because Love Dalén, who appears in the documentary, was a Swedish scientist available for comment. In an interview with Dahlén for Vetenskapens värld, appended directly to the film, Dahlén dismisses Church’s project, and rightly so. It seems no more realistic than Genesis 2.0 (2018). Dahlén and other contributors do find some cool stuff in the film, but it’s clear that the Science Channel editors went with the de-extinction angle for spectacle’s sake.

entry in unreviewed series moving picture nature fiction