Adam Wathan and I made the following to help spread awareness about what will be perhaps the greatest achievement of modern science; the creation of a chickenosaurus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB0wE5R6E3Q
From CNN:
Why we're creating a 'chickenosaurus'
June 12, 2011|By Jack Horner, Special to CNN
When I was a young boy, I dreamed of two things: one, to become a paleontologist, and another, to have a pet dinosaur. I have become a paleontologist, and now I strive to figure out a way to bring back or create my living dinosaur.
I was very fortunate during my early years as a paleontologist, in that my field crews and I made some remarkable discoveries indicating dinosaurs to have been extremely social. We found a dinosaur nesting ground with clutches of eggs and nests containing the skeletons of babies, and massive accumulations of juvenile and adult skeletons. These discoveries led to our current understanding of dinosaurs as colonial nesters and good parents, and animals that traveled in gigantic herds.
These social behaviors were depicted in Michael Crichton's novel and Steven Spielberg's movie "Jurassic Park." But it was the book and movie's premise that dinosaurs could be brought back to life -- from DNA found in insects that bit the dinosaurs -- that interested me the most.
Some scientists had attempted to retrieve DNA from insects in amber, and unfortunately, they had not found it possible. In 1993, when the movie was released, my graduate student Mary Schweitzer and I got a National Science Foundation grant to attempt to extract DNA from a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.
Alas, we didn't find DNA in the dinosaur either, but Mary went on to discover soft tissues and even proteins in another T-rex we excavated in 2001.
But even though we didn't find DNA in an extinct dinosaur, I decided to see if we could retro-engineer a living dinosaur -- all birds are living dinosaurs -- and make it look like an extinct dinosaur.
My colleague Hans Larsson, using developmental biology techniques at McGill University, was studying the transition between extinct dinosaurs and birds, trying to understand how birds came to lose their tails and transform hands to wings. I figured if he could figure this out, we could reverse the methods and make a bird with hands and a tail. It was the beginning of the "Build a Dinosaur Project."
The Build a Dinosaur Project continues as researchers attempt to identify two atavistic genes proposed to control the appearance of the three-fingered hand and the primitive tail. This search involves the knocking out of target genes in early developing chicken embryos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB0wE5R6E3Q
From CNN:
Why we're creating a 'chickenosaurus'
June 12, 2011|By Jack Horner, Special to CNN
When I was a young boy, I dreamed of two things: one, to become a paleontologist, and another, to have a pet dinosaur. I have become a paleontologist, and now I strive to figure out a way to bring back or create my living dinosaur.
I was very fortunate during my early years as a paleontologist, in that my field crews and I made some remarkable discoveries indicating dinosaurs to have been extremely social. We found a dinosaur nesting ground with clutches of eggs and nests containing the skeletons of babies, and massive accumulations of juvenile and adult skeletons. These discoveries led to our current understanding of dinosaurs as colonial nesters and good parents, and animals that traveled in gigantic herds.
These social behaviors were depicted in Michael Crichton's novel and Steven Spielberg's movie "Jurassic Park." But it was the book and movie's premise that dinosaurs could be brought back to life -- from DNA found in insects that bit the dinosaurs -- that interested me the most.
Some scientists had attempted to retrieve DNA from insects in amber, and unfortunately, they had not found it possible. In 1993, when the movie was released, my graduate student Mary Schweitzer and I got a National Science Foundation grant to attempt to extract DNA from a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.
Alas, we didn't find DNA in the dinosaur either, but Mary went on to discover soft tissues and even proteins in another T-rex we excavated in 2001.
But even though we didn't find DNA in an extinct dinosaur, I decided to see if we could retro-engineer a living dinosaur -- all birds are living dinosaurs -- and make it look like an extinct dinosaur.
My colleague Hans Larsson, using developmental biology techniques at McGill University, was studying the transition between extinct dinosaurs and birds, trying to understand how birds came to lose their tails and transform hands to wings. I figured if he could figure this out, we could reverse the methods and make a bird with hands and a tail. It was the beginning of the "Build a Dinosaur Project."
The Build a Dinosaur Project continues as researchers attempt to identify two atavistic genes proposed to control the appearance of the three-fingered hand and the primitive tail. This search involves the knocking out of target genes in early developing chicken embryos.
