Ever think, Man, I wish I had a pet dinosaur? That would be so cool. Never thought that? Well, then it’s just me. But think about it. Wouldn’t it be really awesome? Sooner rather than later, it may actually be possible.
Jack Horner, a famous paleontologist, was looking to clone dinosaurs. He dug up dinosaurs, then had a friend of his look inside the bone. And then, she dunked it in acid and guess what was left? Blood vessels.
If you’ve read my other articles, you know that to clone or modify an animals through Genetic Engineering, you take the DNA and then modify it, or put it in another animal. And you can get DNA from blood vessels.
So he was extremely excited, but as hard as they tried, they couldn’t find any DNA. It turns out that DNA breaks down over time. But Jack Horner didn’t give up.
According to modern science, birds are dinosaurs. In fact, they are classified just the same, called Avian Dinosaurs and the ones who went extinct are called Non-Avian Dinosaurs. So they have a close relation. And he looked at a photo of a velociraptor hand and a photo of an Archaeopteryx hand. Both had fingers. But a pigeon wing didn’t.
Jack Horner and his friends found out that baby chickens still have fingers, until a gene kicks in which merges the fingers into a wing. And also, they found that chickens would have long tails as well, until a gene kicks in.
Currently, Horner and his friends are looking for those genes to turn them off, and develop a chicken with claws and a tail--the Chickenosaurus.
Want to watch it yourself? Watch at TED Talks