I recently went to the theatre to go see “Jurassic World” and I found myself asking the question: could this all be possible? In the original 1993 film “Jurassic Park” directed by Steven Spielberg, the scientists took the dinosaur blood from mosquitoes frozen in amber to get the dinosaur DNA, and then they filled in the missing parts of the sequence with frog DNA. Once they completed the strands, they grew the synthetic embryos in ostrich eggs where they hatched to be dinosaurs.
Watch the clip for the movie here
They were all supposed to be female, except a gene from the frogs allowed for some spontaneous sex changes. This resulted in the dinosaurs being able to produce in the park and grow as a species on their own. As it turns out, the entire construction of dino DNA is near impossible. Since dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago, most of the sample DNA has been degraded. Even if they had been preserved at colder temperatures, the bonds would have broken down after about 6.8 million years.
Much of this has to do with the half life of DNA, which is about 521 years. After that allotted amount of time, the bonds holding the DNA together will break apart. Say they actually figured out how to construct a dinosaur genome, the DNA would need to be transferred into chromosomes and implanted into an “egg and cytoplasm of a closely related species.”
Jack Horner, an American paleontologist, wrote a novel called How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn’t Have to Be Forever. In his book he proposed that we genetically alter chicken embryos to have dino-like features upon their hatching. Since modern day birds supposedly evolved from dinosaurs, some initial traits are bound to still lie within them (whether or not they are expressed.)
Even if it were possible to bring dinosaurs back, would it really be a great idea? The food chain would be altered and smaller predators would have to face competition in order to survive. Plus it would endanger the human race, haven’t you all see the movies? Although it would be super cool to have our own prehistoric park, maybe it’s best to let the past stay in the past.
I always thought the technique that they used to bring the dinosaurs to life in Jurassic Park was interesting. However it would not be possible to use this technique because the amber would not preserve the DNA of the animal well enough.
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1221
A great article, you certainly did lots of works into this. The jurassic park is definitely one of the best and successful serious movies. As Dominica mentioned above I also thinking about omg what a brilliant and creative idea this is every time I watch the movie. Especially the newest one in this summer that is really the most close to reality scene regarding dinosaurs I have ever seen, especially the part Claire ran faster with high hells than dinosaur, how amazing is that.
With the technology and biological improvement I believe that one day humans may be able to create a real world Jurassic Park, but personally I wish it would not happen. I do not know whether I could run faster than Claire if anything unexpected happens.
I think there’s a lot of scientific and ethical applications behind the idea of making a park like this! Couldn’t we use it for pure research, or would the profit become the focus? The interesting thing about science, in my opinion, is that human nature can cloud what is truly beneficial for our knowledge, and what we need not meddle in. Could reproducing dinosaurs be needless? This is just a basic break-down of the idea of making new dinosaurs, kinda like food for thought. http://mentalfloss.com/article/49757/will-we-ever-be-able-clone-dinosaurs
Every time I watch one of those movies I always think to myself, “who thought this was a good idea?!” I found your post very interesting because I always wondered the same thing but just assumed it was science fiction. I too think it would be best to just keep dinosaurs in the past but it is fascinating to think about how we can genetically create them by using genes from existing animals today.
this idea is so cool!! It is a bit frightening but its so cool how science can work to potentially make things like this possible