Yes, this is for real.
No, there isn't dinosaur DNA trapped in amber, waiting to be replicated and cloned.
But that's not the only way to make a dino, said Jack Horner, the paleontologist who worked on "Jurassic World" (and the rest of the "Jurassic Park" films), and he wants to make it happen.
How did we get to this point, where Horner — one of the main inspirations for Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" character Alan Grant — thinks we can make a live dinosaur within five to 10 years?
"It all started with 'Jurassic Park,'" Horner told Business Insider in an interview.
In 1993, the same year the first movie came out, he and then-graduate student Mary Schweitzer, who has continued to make some amazing discoveries in the field of paleontology, tried to extract DNA from dinosaur bones.
They failed. DNA basically starts coming apart as soon as a cell dies, says Horner, and no one has ever found intact dinosaur DNA — he doesn't think it's possible. "If you did the thing they did in 'Jurassic Park,'" says Horner (referring to the story's solution of filling in dino DNA gaps with frog DNA), "you'd basically have a frog."
About 20 years of genetics research later, however, Horner has another plan — and it relies on the fact that we have a more effective way to get "dinosaur" DNA.
Picture this guy (or gal?), but smaller and feathered.
Credit to businessinsider.com
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-paleontologist-who-worked-on-jurassic-world-is-trying-to-create-a-real-dinosaur-within-5-to-10-years-2015-6#ixzz3cVMsrQbj
Credit to businessinsider.com
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-paleontologist-who-worked-on-jurassic-world-is-trying-to-create-a-real-dinosaur-within-5-to-10-years-2015-6#ixzz3cVMsrQbj
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