Did we learn our mistake from the jurassic park series?
In: Biology
In addition to the lack of dinosaur DNA that others have already pointed out, it also turns out that cloning extinct species to being them back to life is a lot harder than anticipated.
One of the closest we have ever come was with the Pyrenean ibex, a type of wild goat found in the mountains along the border between France and spain, which became extinct in 2000. Scientist had already started to collect DNA before that point. So that started out as well as it could have.
We also have plenty of closely related animals still around. Scientist could simply have a common goat act as a mother for the animal that was to be the rebirth of its kind.
Despite all that the animal died from birth defects shortly after its birth, the Pyrenean ibex had been revived for only a few short minutes before it became extinct again.
That was what happened under the best possible circumstances.
For dinosaurs things would be much harder.
The passenger pigeon that once flocked across the skies of North America in large numbers would be a candidate for de-extinction.
It is technically an extinct dinosaur by the way scientist use that term and there are plenty of well preserved speciems around in museums and private collections. The animal became extinct about one and a quarter centuries ago in the 1890s. We have plenty of closely related species around to help out with eggs and with missing pieces. (It also should be much less likely to eat people should the experiment get out of hand.)
The way things are now we ill never recreate the passenger pigeon though.
Not only is DNA far more fragile than the Jurassic Park movies might lead you to believe. It is also not the complete blueprint that you need to make an animal that we thought for a long time.
Between mitochondrial DNA and epigentics, there there is a lot more that goes into making a creature than just the genetic code in its chromosomes.
For big and intelligent creatures like the dinos from the park you also have to assume that a lot of what made them what they are is not just instincts but also learned behavior that they pick up from their families.
This is a lot more tricky than popular wisdom in the later 20th century had people believe.
We might to have make do with dinosaur animatronics and robots and as “West World” by the same author as “Jurassic Park” has taught us there is nothing that could go wrong with that.
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