Damn it! I was hoping i'd be saying hi to a friendly Velociraptor on my way to the shop for my morning paper...

Joking aside i never really thought it would happen in my lifetime but maybe in future they would produce one of those massive tree eating ones from Jurassic Park...

What was the previous number they had about decay rate?

I can't find it.

To quote Arthur C Clarke's First Law...

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

And to quote Forrest Gump...

And that's all I have to say about that.

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
To quote Arthur C Clarke's First Law...

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

And to quote Forrest Gump...

And that's all I have to say about that.

A C Clark, makes complete sense and I don't seem to recall him ever stating any particular thing being impossible.

I think impossible would be the wrong way to characterize this (as was stated). I think this means we have to be a lot more creative, and lessens the odds significantly.

One thing I've learned over the years is that nothing is impossible.

As a matter of fact, almost every time I heard or read someone saying that something was impossible to do, I already knew that it had been done many times before.

Even though in this particular case I haven't heard of it being done already. I suspect that someone has already cloned some sort of dinosaur already, and we just haven't heard about the results, simply because anyone doing it is going to do it in secret until they have the process licked, or until they have enough on hand to sell one or more.

Somewhere someone is doing the impossible, and they are keeping quiet about it, until they are ready to show and tell.

Originally posted by Lonewulph
Yeah you missed it but my fault, I was reinforcing on what you said, in my opinion, that although these scientist say it is impossible to clone based on their DNA decay findings, that it might be forever one day be possible. Echoeing your quote of Clark, who stated that if that elder says something is impossible they are wrong

Even in the Jurassic Park movies, they didn't have enough DNA to clone the Dinosaurs.

Remember, they had to use DNA from modern animals to fill the gaps created where the Dino DNA had degraded too badly. So who is to say that the movie and reality might not some day mirror each other? It's good to be skeptical of the word impossible. Some things probably are impossible, but doing what was done in the Jurassic park movie which was in effect creating some kind of hybrid using modern DNA to fill the gaps doesn't sound impossible.

On the other hand I'm not sure we should be playing god making hybrids like that, but that won't stop some people from doing it anyway.

Even in the Jurassic Park movies, they didn't have enough DNA to clone the Dinosaurs.

Remember, they had to use DNA from modern animals to fill the gaps created where the Dino DNA had degraded too badly.

On the other hand I'm not sure we should be playing god making hybrids like that, but that won't stop some people from doing it anyway.

True I remember that, I think they used frog DNA to fill the gap and they also wanted the 'hybrid' to be of the same sex so that they couldn't reproduce...but "nature found a way", something like that.

I noticed in the summary of the article I get the feeling they left room for other possibilities because the dna strands they were using for the test model were from the 'bird' species MOA (looks like an ostrich, doesn't look like it can fly), and I would assume their bone would not be near as dense as some of the large land predators.

"In other words, the last break to separate the final two bases in the DNA code occurs after a maximum of 6.8 million years – and this is indeed a highly optimistic estimate.

In addition, we know that much longer DNA fragments are required in order to be sequenced and meaningful, and such fragments would be gone a long time before the 6.8 million year mark.

So dinosaur DNA is still science fiction … but then again, we all know now that birds are actually (theropod) dinosaurs, so in that sense it is easily argued our entire study is based on DNA from extinct dinosaurs."

All I have to say is: Google "scientists secretly cloning" and look at all the results. Don't tell me they aren't trying to secretly clone humans and animals. There is always a mad scientist or two or a thousand. I'd bet my bottom dollar they will try to clone this mammal, dinosaurs and many more things. They don't want the public to know because many people are against cloning, especially the cloning of humans.

Can you imagine being the first scientist to clone a human? Your name in history forever! I don't believe this article's diagnosis of impossibility for a second.