From depictions in the world’s oldest cave paintings to starring roles in modern franchises like Ice Age, the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) has captivated humans for centuries, transforming from a symbol of worship and sustenance into a source of scientific intrigue and entertainment today.

Evolving around 300,000 years ago in an area of eastern Siberia referred to as the mammoth steppe, the fuzzy behemoth ruled the Pleistocene Epoch of our last ice age, with its steppe-tundra ecosystem stretching throughout the world, from the Iberian Peninsula through Eurasia and northern China, and across the Bering land bridge into Alaska and the Yukon.

A megaherbivore keystone species, the woolly mammoth played a vital role in maintaining the defining landscapes of the ice age with its massive size packing in permafrost and preventing the growth of invasive species. Today, as scientists at the de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences edge closer to the mammoth’s revival, the species is stepping into a new role as it expedites the development of conservation technology.

“The technologies one would need in order to bring back something similar to a mammoth are exactly the types of technologies we need to be able to protect and preserve species that are still alive today but in danger of becoming extinct like the mammoth did,” Beth Shapiro Ph.D., Colossal Biosciences’ chief scientific officer, explained in a Q&A with Stat News.

With Colossal Biosciences forging ahead with the woolly mammoth’s anticipated return, here’s an overview of the enduring icon and what it continues to teach us.

History Lessons From a Preserved Legend 

Considered one of the most studied extinct species of all time, the woolly mammoth has fueled insight and advancement, providing a look into the past and a blueprint for the future.

Historically ruling over what are still considered some of the coldest landscapes on Earth, the species has stood the test of time due to its preservation in the icy permafrost that dominates Siberia, Alaska, and parts of the Yukon.

First documented in 1643 when workers in Bruges, Belgium, discovered what naturalists at the time assumed was a humanlike giant, the woolly mammoth wasn’t identified as a distinct species until over a century later in 1796, when French biologist Georges Cuvier used its existence to establish extinction as a scientific fact.

Today, as a changing environment continues to unearth well-preserved woolly mammoth remains, advancing technologies provide newfound insights into the species, including the potential cause of its extinction.

While scientists have attributed the species’ widespread decline 10,000 years ago to a combination of human predation and a changing environment, the mystery has remained of what led to its extinction in areas like Wrangel Island, Alaska, where it thrived for an additional 6,000 years with no predators or climate-related impacts.

“Wrangel Island was a golden place to live,” Love Dalén, Ph.D., a founding member of the Swedish Centre for Palaeogenetics and a woolly mammoth adviser for Colossal Biosciences, told The New York Times.

Last year, performing a comparative analysis of the genomes of 14 mammoths that lived on Wrangel Island between 4,333 and 9,219 years ago and seven that lived on mainland Siberia 12,158 years ago, Dalén and scientists from the Center for Paleogenetics determined that the final blow to the species was likely dealt by a completely random catastrophic event worsened by the population’s genetic bottleneck and lack of diversity.

“Mammoths are an excellent system for understanding the ongoing biodiversity crisis and what happens from a genetic point of view when a species goes through a population bottleneck,” evolutionary geneticist at the Center for Paleogenetics and study co-author Marianne Dehasque said in a statement.

Indeed, as Colossal Biosciences continues its groundbreaking de-extinction work, the mammoth’s impacts on reversing Earth’s biodiversity crisis continue to be felt. Recently, in announcing its procurement of Series C funding, the company revealed several milestones in conservation technology, like the widespread targeted use of multiplex editing on the Asian elephant genome and the enhancement of biobanking viability.

“These mammoth milestones mark a pivotal step forward for de-extinction technologies,” commented Dalén. “The dedication of the team at Colossal to precision and scientific rigor is truly inspiring, and I have no doubt they will be successful in resurrecting core mammoth traits.”

A Cautionary Tale of the Impacts of Extinction

While the woolly mammoth’s return provides a unique boon to conservation, its extinction has had the exact opposite effect. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Carnegie Institution for Science, the mammoth’s extinction has actively contributed to global warming by changing the composition of the mammoth steppe, indicating the cascading effects of losing a megaherbivore keystone species.

Similarly, a more recent study led by Yale University found that increased plant matter in the wake of megaherbivore extinctions like the woolly mammoth and giant ground sloth have led to higher frequency wildfires that still impact ecosystems today.

“These species could be ecosystem engineers which affected the habitat by their feeding on and trampling of grasses, damaging trees, and fertilizing the ground with their dung. Their extinction, whether caused by climate change, human activity, or a combination of the two, is likely to have had wider-reaching effects on the environment,” said Adrian Lister, Ph.D., a megafaunal extinction researcher at the Natural History Museum in London.

While the impacts of the woolly mammoth’s loss cannot be reversed or understated, by leveraging the species historical insights and ancient DNA into a project as ambitious as de-extinction, Colossal Biosciences is offering it a second chance to define landscapes by fueling a conservation tool kit and aiding biodiversity worldwide.

“All of these are technologies that have application across genetic rescue and also even human health landscapes,” Shapiro explained to Gizmodo. “By giving us this moon shot — by saying we’re going to get to a mammoth — we have created a path. We have created a moon shot that forces us through these technologies in a way that I think otherwise we might not get there.”