Should we bring extinct species back? | with Sadiah Qureshi
Traditionally, extinction has meant gone forever. But does it still?Historian of science Sadiah Qureshi traces how we came to believe in extinction at all (a surprisingly recent idea) and asks what happens to that idea now that biotechnology promises to reverse it.
Until the late 18th century, most European naturalists thought species simply could not vanish. It took comparative anatomy, the discovery of Neanderthal remains, and the shocking speed with which the great auk and the passenger pigeon disappeared before extinction became a process we understood as ongoing, and human-driven. In this talk, Sadiah follows that history to the present day: to frozen zoos and liquid nitrogen banks, to the cloned Pyrenean ibex that lived for only a few minutes, and to the argument now being made that a species whose cells sit in cryopreservation is not truly dead at all.
If frozen cells forestall extinction, when do we declare a species lost? And if revival becomes possible, will we still feel compelled to save species before they die?
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction: A World of Extinctions
01:25 When Nobody Believed in Extinction
02:38 Cuvier, Mammoths and the First Extinct Species
03:54 Neanderthals and the Discovery of Deep Human Time
06:58 How Extinction Shaped Colonial Prejudice
08:04 The Great Auk: Hunted for Its Rarity
10:01 Alfred Newton and the Birth of Wildlife Protection
12:05 Bison: The First Species Pulled Back From the Brink
14:47 The Passenger Pigeon and the Death of Martha
18:36 Would You Bring a Species Back?
19:30 Frozen Zoos and the Invention of Cryopreservation
23:22 The Cloned Ibex: A Double Extinction?
26:02 Are Frozen Cells Really Dead?
29:22 The Case Against De-Extinction
32:01 Mammoths, Dire Wolves and Colossal Biosciences
33:49 De-Extinction Becomes Policy
34:43 What Kind of Future Are We Building?
41:02 Birdsong, Trees and Tigers
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About the speaker:
Sadiah Qureshi holds a Chair in Modern British History at the University of Manchester. Her latest book, Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction (Allen Lane, 2025), was shortlisted for the Royal Society's Trivedi Science Book Prize. She cannot bear the thought of living in a world without birdsong, trees, or tigers.
Sadiah's book "Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction" is available here: https://geni.us/ecq6b
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This was filmed at the Royal Institution on the 13th of June 2026.
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#RoyalInstitution #Extinction #DeExtinction #Mammoth #Conservation #historyofscience
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