Bummer! Science Officially Stomps All Hope of Dinosaur Cloning

I've always been a huge fan of the dinosaur age and hoped that one day, in my life time, I would see scientist successfully clone one. Especially after watching that special broadcasts covering the retrieval of a Woolly Mammoth from the ice and how they intend to clone the baby.
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Well, now it seems there's no sense in holding my breath with the scientists determination that due to the half-life rate of DNA, even preserved in optimal conditions, will decay to the point of hopeless cloning after the large, however insufficient number, of 6.8 million years. Not quite the 65 million we would need to hatch one of our very own.
Sadly,I suppose its time to put away my dinos on the shelf and move on and refocus on the space program or something.

Full Story with break down

reply to post by Lonewulph


Don't give up hope.

Can't be too far off that we will be able to create synthetic DNA and be able to piece together a dino DNA by different fragments found.

All this proves is the chance of cloning a dino from finding a fully intact piece of DNA is pretty much impossible.

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...

It shouldn't stop them from being able to clone a mammoth though.

en.wikipedia.org...

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, proboscideans commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch from around 5 million years ago, into the Holocene at about 4500 years ago

Not quite a dinosaur, but still would be fascinating if it happens.

reply to post by isyeye


That's true, we still do have that one in the works, and they are pretty awesome.

What was the previous number they had about decay rate?

I can't find it.

reply to post by Lonewulph


looks like our only hope is the team working on modifying chicken DNA to make a look alike T-Rex.

www.wired.com...

Very not cool weak force, very not cool at all!

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.

reply to post by Lonewulph


No? The article you linked to and the premise for this thread seem to about how cloning dinosaurs is impossible.

It even says in your article...

Then we explain how resurrecting the dinosaurs is not possible

Or am I missing something?

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
reply to post by Lonewulph

 

No? The article you linked to and the premise for this thread seem to about how cloning dinosaurs is impossible.

It even says in your article...

Then we explain how resurrecting the dinosaurs is not possible

Or am I missing something?

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

reply to post by Lonewulph


Ah! I see what you're saying now. My misunderstanding. Sorry about that!

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.

reply to post by Lonewulph


They wouldn't survive or be able to function properly even if they could clone them. At the time the dino's were around there was a water canopy around the earth. That did something to the air pressure or something like that, I read something about how that factor played a major role in how they were able to survive. But now that the water canopy is gone it would be far different for them. Like look at how slow moving an elephant is. that means that a dinosaur wouldn't basically not have the ability to even move much in our climate. At least I think.

One other thing. If they did find good DNA, well the very first thing they'd announce on MSM is how they didn't find it, and how impossible it is to clone now anyway. So chances are they did find good dna and are working on a clone as we speak.

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."

reply to post by r2d246


The water canopy stems from pseudo-science in the 1880's to try and explain how the Great Flood in the Bible could have happened. It has been utterly disproved.

Also, saying one thing and doing another makes absolutely no sense. The government might do it, but generally scientists don't get the money to continue their research without publishing results.

Originally posted by r2d246
reply to post by Lonewulph

 

If they did find good DNA, well the very first thing they'd announce on MSM is how they didn't find it, and how impossible it is to clone now anyway.

Oh God, not the whole "scientists are conspiring to keep the man down!" routine. If anything, the media (and, to a lesser degree, aspects of the scientific community) are all to quick to trump a new discovery or idea as something far more certain than the research implies. Just look at the cold fusion fiasco to see this in effect. Oh hang on, I thought the evil scientists would have tried to suppress such a discovery rather than creating a media circus of hearsay and conjecture? Methinks your argument lacks logical consistency.

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.