Dolly the Sheep - Metal Pen

Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. Before Dolly was born, this was thought to be impossible. Scientists believed that specialised adult cells, those that had a certain job (like a skin cell or a liver cell), only held the information to do with that job. Dolly was grown from a single mammary cell which contained all the information to create a whole new sheep. Dolly started her life as a single cell in a test tube taken from the mammary gland of a Finn Dorset sheep and an egg cell from a Scottish Blackface Sheep. Once normal development was confirmed in a lab at six days, the embryo was transferred into a surrogate mother. Dolly was then born on 5 July 1996 and named after the country western singer Dolly Parton. Dolly is currently on display in 'Explore' within the Science and Technology galleries. Find out even more about Dolly here.