Could We Ressurect Dinosaurs ?

I was thinking with all this cloning technology going and is advancing at an alarming rate. Could we somehow use the fossils of dinosaurs maybe extract DNA and clone it.
could it happen?
or do you think its impossible ?
tell me what u think

Well it's certainly possible. It would be a good way to study them, but remeber Jurassic Park?

Maybe it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.

or laying lizards lounge...sorry bout that!

Knowing this crazy world as it is i wouldnt be suprised if they are working on it as we speak

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I guess it's technically possible-- the limiting factor in the process would be obtaining adequate quality DNA to work with. I don't think it would work with fossils as the oraganic material has been mineralized, hasn't it?

Perhaps it could be done with frozen remains like wooly mamoths, or more recently extinct species.

Also, I believe that once the DNA is isolated a fertilized egg has to be created and inserted into a host to bear it to term. So you have to have some species similar enough to the original to take the pregnancy to term and bear the young. So dinosaurs might not be possible.

Perhaps someone with more biology background can explain it better.
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I think like cimmerius said finding adequate quality DNA to work with is the key. I dont think a fossil wil produce any DNA. Even when we find frozen wooly mamoths their DNA can be damaged I dont think ice is to kind to DNA.

I dont think we can repair any DNA strands yet and need complete strands to work with. Perhaps in the future we will be able to make clones from damaged DNA.

For a host I think we can only really use a ostrich eggs which is the largest egg on the planet. Perhaps we could engineer larger ostrich eggs to make a better host enviroment as many of the larger dino has eggs that were bigger. Or even a create a artificial enviroment that would mimic a dino egg.

But for finding the key DNA I dont know maybe something like in Jurassic Park with blood drinking insects in Amber.

No one's been able to find dinosaur genetic material (except of course people studying birds). -However-, there was a study that claimed to have done so. They sequenced the sample and found that it was exactly the same as the same gene/whatever in modern turkeys. Most people think that some one's lunch became involved somewhere. If it was different than any known sample, then that would be interesting tho.

Also, proteins and such have been recovered, such as bone related proteins.

i say it is possible but they would have to find enough dna to do tests and that. and they could put them on a island to studie how they live and interact just like the movie

There's a reason why Michael Crichton writes good books. 99% truth 1% lie.

No, it's not possible (or at least not for most species.)

To do a "cloning" you'd need good DNA from cells. But dinosaur fossils are organic material that has been turned to stone and the DNA has completely vanished (not even a comparable structure in stone.) There was one "mummified dinosaur" found, but I don't think there's usable material there, either.

You might spend a lot of time and tweak current living species and splice a lot of stuff and after a long time come up with something that looks like a dinosaur. But it wouldn't be one of the originals.

Thanks, Byrd. Someone needed to set this straight. You can't clone rock.
But, let's say you could clone dinos. Why be that stupid. Yeah, yeah neato monsters roaming the Earth again. That and dominating the food chain, all in favor of becoming a food item say "Aye." Not.

I saw this a couple of times in this thread...

The process of fossilization does not turn organic material into stone. The organic material decays, and leaves a hollow casing. This gets filled with sediment, which is compacted into rock. So don't go looking for DNA in fossils.

There is also a process called permineralization . That site seems to be refering to plants in particular but it applies to non-plants as well.

here is an abstract page, and there is a link to a pdf with photos. Its from a researcher at SUNY Stonybrook in NY.

What about the very example used in Jurassic Park though...

A mosquito, preserved in amber, with dino blood inside...

I'm no expert on fossilization/preservation...but is such a scenario feasible? Would the dino blood be salvageable in this circumstance? Or would it be useless?

I won't say impossible, but the person who finds that should then go purchase a lottery Powerball ticket!

Originally posted by Gazrok
What about the very example used in Jurassic Park though...

I think the problem with that (and anything trying to get dna) is that dna degrades over time, so anything from so long ago is going to be very unlikely. I do like how C. deals with the missing portions, inserting hypothetically probable sections from related animals.

In Jurrasic Park they did not have a full strand of DNA so they mixed it in with some DNA from a frog. couldn't we just do that?

wait a minute even if we did clone them what would we do with them like we wouldn't just stick them in a zoo would we???

What would we do with the cloned dinos then. We would not be the "top predators" anymore. We would be another food choice for the carnivores. Think about being lost in the woods with packs of wolves about. Now replace the pack of wolves with a pack of, let's say, Utharaptors- 6ft tall, 350 lb. bipedal hunters. All teeth and claws and moving about 20 mph. Still wanna' clone them?

A few good sources for this topic...

biomed.brown.edu...

Cloning Dinosaurs - Can it be done?


What do we need to do? What are the "parts" needed?

DNA, in the form of an entire Genome
Cell
Technology for putting these together
With the right combination of DNA and cell, it could work

BUT: a genome and a cell are remarkably complex "parts"

However, if you wanted to do it, Crichton's (Poinar/Wilson) approach is a plausible one.

www.biblicalcreation.org.uk...

Professor Lewis Wolpert, one of our leading developmental biologists, has contributed something to these discussions. Responding to the thought that the Jurassic Park scheme for obtaining dinosaur DNA was not as far-fetched as first appeared, Wolpert declared in The Independent(Letters, 17 July, 1993): `Making dinosaurs from fossil DNA is science fiction, not science, and you should try to keep them distinct'.

www.findarticles.com...

If we are lucky enough to find a mite or a horsefly that blundered into a pool of sun-warmed or very fluid tree sap after biting a dinosaur, then the resin might have preserved in that insect thousands of dinosaur cells, each containing in its nucleus a copy of the genetic blueprints necessary for building a dinosaur. My colleagues and I are drawing up plans for microscanners that--when we have the technology to build them, in about 15 years--will allow us to probe those ancient cells and build copies of their genetic blueprints in a computer. The trick lies in removing the nucleus of an individual cell in about 10 pieces, without disturbing any of its neighboring--and equally precious--cells, and then preserving the pieces so that we can scan them as often as we like, as easily as one scans a laser-engraved compact disk. In this manner, we can build complete copies of dinosaur chromosomes by sampling as few as a dozen amberized cells--and, as I have said, a single bite from a fly probably contains thousands of cells.

Originally posted by cimmerius
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Also, I believe that once the DNA is isolated a fertilized egg has to be created and inserted into a host to bear it to term. So you have to have some species similar enough to the original to take the pregnancy to term and bear the young. So dinosaurs might not be possible.

Perhaps someone with more biology background can explain it better.
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Didn't dinosaurs lay eggs? An embryo wouldn't need to be carried to term if an egg is used, correct? They were reptiles and not mammals, so I don't think that they would give live birth. Someone, please correct me if I am wrong