After years spent hunting for the buried remains of prehistoric animals, a Canadian paleontologist now plans to manipulate chicken embryos to show he can create a dinosaur.
Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal’s McGill University, said he aims to develop dinosaur traits that disappeared millions of years ago in birds.
Larsson believes by flipping certain genetic levers during a chicken embryo’s development, he can reproduce the dinosaur anatomy, he told AFP in an interview.
Though still in its infancy, the research could eventually lead to hatching live prehistoric animals, but Larsson said there are no plans for that now, for ethical and practical reasons — a dinosaur hatchery is “too large an enterprise.”
Yahoo (thanks, Sootica)
Read about this a few weeks ago. It wouldn’t revert to an older species, but rather a new modern dinosaur. I’d love to see it happen.
I can understand the practical reasons, but ethical? We alter the DNA and development of flies and rats for science and kill millions of chickens for food, so what’s the ethical issue in making one chicken into a healthy baby dinosaur?
Fascinating, I too would like to see this.
Grow some stones Larsson!
Why would anyone bother to create a dinosaur from a chicken?
I mean, i understand it is an achievment in the tech of science, but isnt recreating dinosaurs bad news?
Anyone seen Jurrasssic Park?
My point: I want one and i’m quite jealous
Nature is a balance that just happens – if we introduce new species – they could potentially contract a virus that would be able to utilise this new host to create something abominable and unstoppable. However we as a species are individuals but not truly unique. We all think along the same lines. So if you can think it up, someone already has and if you can think of a way of doing something they have already done it. Combine the lack of a moral compass and a huge bank balance you can in theory do anything, so in theory everything has been achieved. Unless nature hides its secrets from those people we will F*!K it right up.
If Pokémon became a reality, I’d go freckin’ crazy.
CHICKEN > DINOSAURS PROJECT FULLY SUPPORTED BY NIALL LAVIGNE
Blimey, has noone seen Jurassic Park?? (Yes, I know it was a film, but even so….)
The dinosaur age has past, why feel the need to resurrect any of its species? I don’t say anything about preserving wildlife from now at this present time, but not creatures from millions of years ago. It doesn’t seem right to me.
LC x
I remember a similar story from a few years back doing basically the same thing. It was about how evalution works. It’s premis is that if you turn off a gene it would default to an earlier state. So if you start “turning off” genes responsable for making feathers in a bird you get Reptile scales for example. So this guy “turned off” chicken genes responable for making a beak in chicken embryos, the result – Hen’s Teeth! Brilliant!
> Why would anyone bother to create a dinosaur from a chicken?
>
Good *heavens*, do you really need to ask?!!
I think I’d rather have one of Jasper Fforde’s home cloning kits of dodos. Apart from anything else, the results might be a bit easier to catch if/when it escapes!
Nah .. dont see this as very usefull. They probably try to proof their hypothesis about the traits that went out of birds .. or .. thought they should do something with that. Whatever, i can’t see it as usefull. Thy should not keep staring at the past but go forward .. do not awake the far past too much … it is not usefull …
“Not useful”.
Of course it’s not useful, that’s the *point*! Which is more likely to get the girl, A or B:
A: “I proved that evolution doesn’t rely solely on genetic makeup, but also on certain factors introduced during embryonic development, by regressing Gallus gallus to a more primitive evolutionary stage.”
B: “When I’m bored, I like to turn a chicken into a dinosaur.”
Answer: B