We’ve all seen the movie Jurassic Park (I assume). The method to the madness of bringing living, breathing dinosaurs back to life in that movie, was to find prehistoric pieces of amber with bugs perfectly preserved inside and extract their blood — assuming that they’ve fed on dinosaurs and contain their DNA. Though it’s likely that scientists have attempted to try this, it’s not something that many expect to actually work. Now comes word that a scientist in Canada has a whole new plan to possibly bring dinosaurs back to life.
Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal’s McGill University, Hans Larsson, believes the fact that dinosaurs are ancestors of birds may just hold the key. He believes that while a chicken is its embryonic stages, he can literally go in and alter this, change that, and replicate what once was, hundreds of millions of years ago.
Larsson has been studying the evolution of birds for a decade now, and truly believes that in time, he could find a way to do the unthinkable: hatch a live prehistoric creature.
The scientist — who was partly inspired by Jurassic Park — says that his research is in its earliest of stages and that we’re still a long way off from actually attempting the process, but for now, he believes it may be too big of a step to take.
Here’s what Larsson had to say:
It’s a demonstration of evolution.
If I can demonstrate clearly that the potential for dinosaur anatomical development exists in birds, then it again proves that birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs.
So the question presents itself once again: if we had the completely legit opportunity to hatch a brand new living dinosaur, would you want to see it happen? Or is playing God in this regard just too far to go, especially with the fear everyone has that we’d lose control and they’d run wild and take over again?
[Source: PhysOrg via io9]
It would certainly ruin creationist theory.
Comment by korollocke — August 30, 2009 @ 8:49 pm
‘Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal’s McGill University, Hans Larsson, believes the FACT that dinosaurs are ancestors of birds may just hold the key.’
LOL FACT. That was a good one guys.
Comment by scrotumbagmonkeyflicker — August 31, 2009 @ 4:38 am
I read an article this morning that said the prehistoric animal MOST likely to get resurrected in the near future was the woolly rhino, since they’ve got well preserved frozen specimens, and modern rhinos would serve as a suitable surrogate. Most surviving dinosaur DNA is far more degraded. Also, no-one has ever managed to clone even a modern bird or reptile, so they’d need to figure that out first.
Also, when we think of dinosaurs, we generally think of big ones like t-rex, but the average dinosaur was about the size of a chicken. You certainly couldn’t hatch a healthy t-rex baby from something the size of a chicken egg, so any cloned dinosaurs probably wouldn’t be big enough to take over the world.
Comment by Sarah — August 31, 2009 @ 4:39 am
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
“Oh yeah “Ooh, aah”, that’s how it always starts. But then there’s running and screaming.”
D.r Ian Malcolm
Comment by c — August 31, 2009 @ 6:21 am
It is going to be a LONG time before anything comes of this.
Comment by Joseph — August 31, 2009 @ 11:00 am
I think it’s better to leave the past where it is, especially if it’s just to make money…
Comment by louki — August 31, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
I gotta agree with louki, as much as Id like to be able to see a real dinosaur in the flesh, what would be the real point besides making money, I dont see it. Besides there’s no room left on this planet for creatures like that to roam free and/or follow a free path of their own, it would be slightly unfair.
I guess one interesting thing might be to see what kind of un-expected instinctual behavioural patterns a dinosaur might display, possibly throwing up new questions and answers about physical/genetic memory…
Comment by Gordon Emanuel — September 1, 2009 @ 3:58 am
I personally green light this project. Build me Compsognathus now! I’ll feed it spoiled meant and mice, it’ll be awesome! Make it so!
Comment by DrNecropolis — September 1, 2009 @ 10:51 am