The Nemo Science Museum in the Netherlands unveiled a massive meatball made from lab-grown DNA of the extinct woolly mammoth on Tuesday.
The meatball was created by the Australian company Vow, which aims to encourage discussion about this meat, described as a more sustainable alternative to natural meat.
Company founder Tim Noxsmith told Reuters, "We wanted to create something completely different from anything you can get now," adding that another reason for choosing the mammoth was that scientists believe its extinction was due to climate change.
The meatball, which smells like crocodile meat, is not for consumption at this time.
Noxsmith revealed that "the protein within it is four thousand years old. We haven't seen it for a very long time, which means we want to subject it to rigorous testing."
The meatball was made from sheep cells into which one gene of the mammoth known as myoglobin was inserted. There were some gaps in the mammoth DNA sequence obtained by Vow, so African elephant DNA was used to fill in those gaps.
