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UK Scientist Who Created Dolly the Sheep Clone Dies at 79

FILE - Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut is seen in the Pauls Church in Frankfurt, central Germany, Monday, March 14, 2005. Ian Wilmut, the cloning pioneer whose research was critical to the creation of Dolly the Sheep, has died, the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh said Monday. He was 79. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)
FILE - Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut is seen in the Pauls Church in Frankfurt, central Germany, Monday, March 14, 2005. Ian Wilmut, the cloning pioneer whose research was critical to the creation of Dolly the Sheep, has died, the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh said Monday. He was 79. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)
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UK Scientist Who Created Dolly the Sheep Clone Dies at 79

FILE - Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut is seen in the Pauls Church in Frankfurt, central Germany, Monday, March 14, 2005. Ian Wilmut, the cloning pioneer whose research was critical to the creation of Dolly the Sheep, has died, the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh said Monday. He was 79. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)
FILE - Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut is seen in the Pauls Church in Frankfurt, central Germany, Monday, March 14, 2005. Ian Wilmut, the cloning pioneer whose research was critical to the creation of Dolly the Sheep, has died, the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh said Monday. He was 79. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

British scientist Ian Wilmut, whose research was central to the creation of the cloned animal, Dolly the Sheep, has died at the age of 79, the University of Edinburgh said on Monday.
His death on Sunday years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, was announced by the University of Edinburgh, where he worked, Reuters said.
Wilmut, along with Keith Campbell from the animal sciences research institute in Scotland, generated news headlines and heated ethical debates in 1996 when they created Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.
"He led efforts to develop cloning, or nuclear transfer, techniques that could be used to make genetically modified sheep. It was these efforts which led to the births of Megan and Morag in 1995 and Dolly in 1996," the university said in a statement.
Dolly, named after country singer Dolly Parton, was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, using a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).
This involved taking a sheep egg, removing its DNA and replacing it with DNA from a frozen udder cell of a sheep that died years before. The egg was then zapped with electricity to make it grow like a fertilized embryo. No sperm were involved.
Dolly’s creation triggered fears of human reproductive cloning, or producing genetic copies of living or dead people, but mainstream scientists have ruled this out as far too dangerous.
Wilmut, who was born near Stratford-upon-Avon, attended the University of Nottingham, initially to study agriculture, before switching to animal science.
He moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2005, received a knighthood in 2008 and retired from the university in 2012.

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Everest Climber's Remains Believed Found after 100 Years

(FILES) This photograph taken on May 2, 2021 shows a helicopter flying over the Khumbu glacier in the Mount Everest region of Solukhumbu district, some 140kms northeast of Nepal's capital Kathmandu. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP)
(FILES) This photograph taken on May 2, 2021 shows a helicopter flying over the Khumbu glacier in the Mount Everest region of Solukhumbu district, some 140kms northeast of Nepal's capital Kathmandu. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP)
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Everest Climber's Remains Believed Found after 100 Years

(FILES) This photograph taken on May 2, 2021 shows a helicopter flying over the Khumbu glacier in the Mount Everest region of Solukhumbu district, some 140kms northeast of Nepal's capital Kathmandu. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP)
(FILES) This photograph taken on May 2, 2021 shows a helicopter flying over the Khumbu glacier in the Mount Everest region of Solukhumbu district, some 140kms northeast of Nepal's capital Kathmandu. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP)

A documentary team discovered human remains on Mount Everest apparently belonging to a man who went missing while trying to summit the peak 100 years ago, National Geographic magazine reported Friday.

Climate change is thinning snow and ice around the Himalayas, increasingly exposing the bodies of mountaineers who died chasing their dream of scaling the world's highest mountain, AFP reported.

Briton Andrew Irvine went missing in 1924 alongside climbing partner George Mallory as the pair attempted to be the first to reach Everest's summit, 8,848 meters above sea level.

Mallory's body was found in 1999 but clues about Irvine's fate were elusive until a National Geographic team discovered a boot, still clothing the remains of a foot, on the peak's Central Rongbuk Glacier.

On closer inspection, they found a sock with "a red label that has A.C. IRVINE stitched into it", the magazine reported.

The discovery could give further clues as to the location of the team's personal effects and may help resolve one of mountaineering's most enduring mysteries: whether Irvine and Mallory ever managed to reach the summit.

That could confirm Irvine and Mallory as the first to successfully scale the peak, nearly three decades before the first currently recognised summit in 1953 by climbers Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.

"It tells the whole story about what probably happened," Irvine's great-niece Julie Summers told National Geographic.

Members of the Irvine family reportedly offered to share DNA samples to confirm the identity of the remains.

Irvine was 22 when he went missing.

He, along with Mallory, was last spotted by one of the members of their expedition on the afternoon of June 8, 1924, after beginning their final ascent to the summit that morning.

Irvine is believed to have been carrying a vest camera -- the discovery of which could rewrite mountaineering history.

Photographer and director Jimmy Chin, who was part of the National Geographic team, believes the discovery "certainly reduces the search area" for the elusive camera.

More than 300 people have perished on the mountain since expeditions started in the 1920s.

Some are hidden by snow or swallowed down deep crevasses.

Others, still in their colorful climbing gear, have become landmarks en route to the summit and bestowed with gallows humor nicknames, including "Green Boots" and "Sleeping Beauty.”