About 5,700 years ago, on a small, isolated island off the coast of Alaska, a herd of woolly mammoths crossed a treeless tundra. But these weren’t just any mammoths.

Colossal Chief Science Officer Beth Shapiro, Ph.D., spoke at Fortune Brainstorm Tech about how de-extinction technology is revolutionizing biodiversity.

The Wrangel Island mammoths would end up being the final survivors of a once-widespread genus. In their final years, after having thrived in many parts of the world for millions of years, the very last mammoths that ever lived experienced what’s known as...