Imagine more dragons: US biotech firm aims to breed tiny Australian lizard that is near extinction

Colossal Biosciences, which is behind bid to bring back Tasmanian tiger, teams up with Melbourne Zoo to save 15cm reptile

BY ADAM MORTON

A US biotechnology “de-extinction” company behind efforts to bring the Tasmanian tiger, woolly mammoth and dodo back from the dead is backing a project to save a tiny Australian dragon.

The support from Colossal Biosciences for a project to restore the Victorian grassland earless dragon – which was feared extinct before being rediscovered in the wild this year – was announced as the company’s representatives visited Tasmania to speak with officials about their plans and inspect a potential thylacine rewilding site.

Colossal, a Texas-based “breakthrough genetic engineering” company, announced last year it had partnered with the University of Melbourne on a multimillion-dollar bid to bring back the thylacine, a marsupial also known as the Tasmanian tiger. The last known thylacine died in captivity in 1936 and it was declared extinct in the 1980s

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