To Revive an Extinct Dinosaur - Is it at all Possible?

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4 years ago (Last updated: 3 years ago)

Steven Spielberg's film, Jurassic Park, builds on a quite thrilling idea: that DNA from an extinct dinosaur can be found in a mosquito preserved in amber. This DNA could then be used to recreate the species.

While theoretically possible, it has been practically impossible to obtain DNA from an extinct dinosaur species so far. The idea with preservation in amber has its merits, amber definitely has preservative qualities - but it preserves the mosquito, hardly DNA it has ingested. What we could obtain from a mosquito in amber (if any DNA at all) would probably be limited to DNA from the mosquito or from the tree from which the resin (amber) was derived.

Dinosaur bones. Photo James Lee-Unsplash. (CCO-Public Domain)

Attempts have been made to get soft tissue from dinosaurs by dissolving fossilised bone in acid. This can be possible because acid dissolves minerals but not proteins. However, if you don't happen to own dinosaur bones yourself, it is not easy to get permission to dissolve them, since they are considered scientifically too valuable. Needless to say, after being dissolved, they are gone forever. The attempts that have been made, however, proved successful; one found small amounts of soft tissue and could identify the presence of proteins. But no DNA!

It appears as if DNA breaks down too quickly in nature.

There is, however, one way which could lead to recreation of a living dinosaur without the findings of old DNA, at least in theory. That is to start with a bird, which is an evolved dinosaur, and then activate dormant genes from its past. That is called atavism activation. For instance, make it grow a tail and teeth. Birds have genes for both, they are just inactive. Indeed, birds, as all organisms, carry the genes from all their ancestors.

Chicken. Photo Lolame-Pixabay. (CCO-Public Domain)

With this method, it should, at least in theory, be possible to get as far back as to a dinosaur by activating the relevant genes. Although this research is still in its infancy, there are scientific projects making experiments in that direction.

Read also: "How Can We Know Anything about Dinosaurs?"

Copyright © 2020 Meleonymica/Mictorrani. All Rights Reserved.

Here you can find my articles about Palaeontology.

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4 years ago (Last updated: 3 years ago)

Comments

Very well written post! Keep doing what you are doing, waiting for new blogs :)

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4 years ago

Thanks!

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4 years ago

Hey nice article man. Very intereating to readd. Comparing with movie . Add more tast in reading thanks

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4 years ago

Glad to hear that I stimulate your interest in reading. It's a good way to learn more and to broaden one's mind.

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4 years ago

That was very informative as well as interesting. Thanks for making the concept clear for me. It seems like if there any chance of the revival of Dinosaurs then birds are the only chance!! Without no doub.

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4 years ago

As far as we know today, yes. But knowledge can change with new discoveries.

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4 years ago

That was very interesting and kinda surprising to know. I don't know much about dinosaurs actually. I only know that chicken are the closest living "relative" to dinosaurs which made me very surprised. But never knew there were some attempts to revive them! I don't get it though. Why would scientists try and revive a creature which can easily devour humans in few seconds. What's the point?

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4 years ago

Only scientific curiosity, I suppose. That is a very dangerous curiosity because it makes people try to do things without having any idea about how to handle the consequences. They want to see if it is possible, so they try to find a way. Then there can be really dangerous consequences, but they don't think of that, or they don't care.

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4 years ago

The only thing that will happen because of that curiosity is a real life Jurassic Park haha. Like I said I don't know much about dinosaurs and I'm also not sure about the reason of their extinction (maybe because of a huge meteor hitting the earth?) but what I'm very sure about is that our existence would have been impossible with dinosaurs being alive. So they should be careful with that.

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4 years ago

The reason for their extinction was probably a meteorite, but it is just the most plausible theory at the current level of knowledge, not indisputable truth. Yes, we should surely be careful; dangers are lurking in all genetic engineering. But dinosaurs, or paleontology on the whole, is a very interesting subject and offers many mysteries to solve. That ought to appeal to you :)

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4 years ago

Sure thing. I will make some researches about that, I just needed a reason and that was this article. Thanks for making me curious haha. By the way, last time you said something about moving the conversation somewhere more private. Do you still want to? And if so then any suggestions of where ?

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4 years ago

I am sorry, I didn't answer to that because I did not have any immediate suggestion. Had to think a little and then I was so bombed with comments, visible and invisible, that it slipped from my mind. Well... could be as simple as email, but neither of us want to put an email address here, that would become a spam trap. Telegram. But it is not suitable for discussing long texts. I don't know. What do you think?

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4 years ago

It's ok don't be sorry. Uhhhmmm...i don't know to be honest. I was thinking about telegram but apparently you don't like it. so Idk... Kik maybe? if that's still a thing lol. or we can think about something else.

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4 years ago

Ok, we take Telegram. I have a way to give you contact info without exposing it here, but it requires that we both are online at the same time. You must take it direct I send it. So, let me know when you are here online and logged in.

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4 years ago

Lately im here very frequently. But if you want you can comment your telegram user name on one of my older articles because there will be less people there. And the username won't be exposed to so many people. and when i get the notification I can replay so you will delete your comment. If that's look like a good idea to you of course.

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4 years ago

[deleted]

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4 years ago

I got the notification. But when I click it it says no comments yet. I can't see it

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4 years ago

[deleted]

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4 years ago

I got it. i texted you there. I hope i texted the right person haha

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4 years ago

[deleted]

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4 years ago

sorry my phone is on silent and i'm not close to it right now. i checked and yeah i got your replay. go ahead and delete the comments if you want

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4 years ago

I would love to reverse engineer a dinosaur, but I'm not so sure it would be good for the poor little chicken...

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3 years ago

A great article on Dinosaurs.

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4 years ago

Human brains are really amazing but terrifying as well. Out of curiosity they're making tests and experiments to make a theory be possible. But what if it turns out successful? I can't imagine myself or the society living with extinct dinosaurs. Life would be just like in the Dino movies. 😉

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4 years ago

Such experiments undoubtedly can turn out dangerous. In the right environment, dinosaurs were very successful animals, more so than we have been so far - or perhaps I should say more so than mammals have been so far.

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4 years ago

It would be cool if they could merge this concept with the current trend of regrowing human cells from pluripotent stem cells. Because i read somewhere about matured cells getting converted back into stem cells for reculturing but they grow into different parts such as heart, lover, etc if cultured in the right environment. I wonder if it could also work in the revival of dinosaurs

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4 years ago

It is quite possible. The question is if we want to revive dinosaurs. As knowledge for knowledge's sake, yes of course, it would be very interesting, but seriously, what would be the consequences if we start to revive extinct species?

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4 years ago

Depends on the purpise of revival, i suppose and how it would be revived. If it were in a modified environment in which it can be tamed somehow, i think the consequences would lower? Kind of like in the sense of animal domestication. In that way, i think studying would be easier

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4 years ago

Yes, it would extremely interesting to study a dinosaur in real life, but it is important to think through the consequences before really doing something like that.

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4 years ago

Knowing opportunists that fund most of the research on this? They probably won't out of belief that they could possibly domesticate the creature 😂😂😂 and even make a profit as a ROI

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4 years ago