Should we re-create dinosaurs from birds ??

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Except for a minor problem with a big rock 65,000,000 years ago, reptiles would have kept evolving, and so most of the universe might be reptilian.

That some rodent produced a bunch of mammals is strange.

Now starting with an ostrich could be fun. Cross it with an alligator.

Well.. I don't know about proving it, because by the time they breed anything dinosaury people will be like "oh they're just exotic bird breeders, that's not evolution" like they say about dog breeding now, so.. yeah. XD;;

But that totally doesn't mean I don't think we should breed dinosaurs, because I totally do. That would be totally awesome.

i don't remember anything in history that says birds evolved from dinosaurs..

i do not think it is possible to "reverse engineer" the current state of dna sequences in birds to the correct design of a tyrannosaur (for eg). it is possible to reverse engineer sequences into potential lineages, but there are so many potential reasons that any set of dna characteristics evolved, that is is impossible to speculate what genetic lineage gave rise to any current state.
so to try to correctly resolve the statistical likelyhoods of various environmentally adaptive strategies resulting in successful procreation throughout the duration of time from the cretacious until now , is a task beyond humanity at this time i believe.

there has been a few short strands of dna scraped from the marrow of a few cretaceous "bones"(petrified casts of former bones really), and they reveal a short snippet of relays in an otherwise absent dna sequence.
it is like being asked to calculate the sequence of 25,000 number cards given 6 examples of a constant that one can try to rope ideas around to solve it.

i wish them well and i hope there is someone smart enough to reverse engineer a current bird gene correctly back to a true tyrannosaur.

i imagine very often what a tyrannosaur would seem like if it was walking down my street.
i wish i could see one in reality to confirm my respect for them, but they are gone for ever.

This bunch. Birds are members of "Avialae" halfway down the branchy diagram thingy. Birds are dinosaurs - or at least they have a reasonable right to the title, given the number of different species from a huge range of historical time (considerably longer than the time from the K-T event to now!) we call "dinosaurs".

In the book, they filled in the gaps with DNA from frogs and stuff like that, using a ton of computers. They kept kept tweaking the DNA and trying it out (over years and years) until they got something that they felt was pretty close to what the actual dinosaur would've been like...with a few intentional changes here and there to make them "safer" or more interesting.

I thought one of the more interesting bits was how they could put a patent on the dinosaurs

But T-rex didn't evolve into birds. A smaller dinosaur did. You can only go back to a line of descent, not jump to another branch. You would have to program the genetics from scratch, not just reactivate the older ones.

Reptiles came from amphibians, the trunk of the tree, and still around. Everything is just "Tadpoles Gone Wild"

It happened once, but with the ability to map DNA, reduce to a computer program, then run projections on changing one switch, designer anything is possible.

Send a chicken back? Send a frog forward? Either way, you get something that kills, eats, kills, eats, and the age of dinosaurs left only knawed bones.

I have a DNA program, but I am starting with humans to avoid ethics problems.

Working with humans would cause MORE problems, not less. No one knows enough about DNA to simply design a creature in a CAD machine, compile up the genetic sequence and then grow the creature. As of now, we can only probably make small adjustments and turn on sections that are turned off. Its only a question of time before that will change, probably before the 22nd century.

Well, sorry for being banal, but no now living creature comes directly from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs we know and love were quite a separate branch from anything living right now. If it is possible to stop the evolution of of bird embryo on some stage that recreates some ancestor form, it would be something different from anything we found in fossils and, most probably, something unviable. Evolution leaps happen for a reason, y'know.

That is true now, but we don't know enough about how genes cause actual physical structure. Even a faithful recreation of dinosaurs wouldn't result in a 100% "real dinosaur" The environment that they used to live in is gone today. Still, many humans suffer from paralysis from spinal injuries, severe facial deformities and injuries as well as the loss of hands and arms. Creating a dinosaur like animal from an Emu, or a chicken will vastly increase our knowledge of applied genetics.

The spin off benefits from this project could help thousands of people because it will shake up the status quo of medical research and force science to look at genetics in a new way. After all, look at how much we have learned from the space program or sequencing the human genome. A dinosaur like animal will also show the world that our country is still a leader in the world and cement our reputation for technical prowess, an important benefit while we are at war. It will discredit those luddites that still fail to believe in evolution. If rolling back genetics uncovers a long gone animal, evolution is proven because it will be run backwards as well as forwards.

Besides, it will be totally cool to see one in a zoo or perhaps even have one as a pet. Imagine far in the future police officers using raptors instead of K-9 units to search for drugs or catch criminals. Some of them were probably quite intelligent.

NO! It would be like...playing with nature. Besides, you would have to create almost an entire ecosystem. I mean, supposing you have one of those herbivore dinosaurs. I mean, they could probably eat an entire rainforest!! ! The bigger ones, anyway. Or even if not the entire rainforest, it could maybe upset the ecological balance. Or they may not even like the plants and prey there is to eat today.

1. We don't know how in the first place
2. Even if we could, the environment of the world has changed so much since about 65 million ybp, that the result would probably not survive and breed.

ruveyn

Of course we don't That's why we would try to find out.

There are many types of environments on Earth. I agree that the huge plant eaters would probably trash the rain forests. A dinosaur made from a bird would still have many of the chemical traits and organs of a modern bird, just the outside appearance such as arms, teeth, tail, plumage and so on would differ. I don't think that they should necessarily be released into the wild on a large scale. The huge plant eaters would probably be too far removed from the evolutionary tree from birds to get them anyway. The only straight forward way to do it would be to go backwards to the bird ancestor.

Exactly. I mean, maybe the climate may have been much much warmer then. Or colder. Or maybe there was much more oxygen and today they may die of hypoxia. Or it could be the other way around. I think kind of like a saber toothed tiger. I would so love to see one, but supposing they could be recreated, the climate was much colder then. They may not survive now. Or maybe only in areas closer to the poles. But then, also what would they eat? They fed on animals like mammoths. Those aren't around anymore.



There are many environments, but its really complicated, I think. Kind of like keeping fish. A fishtank is like a small ecosystem. Not all fish can live in any environment. Tropical fish, the water has to be a certain temperature. Different fish also need different pH levels and water chemistry and stuff like that. And then, you have a filter, heater, and all that to keep the water clean, and well oxygenated. In the wild, there are the animals that fill those niches. Then there are fish you can't keep together, as they eat each other. And that's just about maybe forty or so gallons or something. Imagine trying to recreate an environment that existed so many millions of years ago.

Besides, genetic engineering and all that is kind of freaky. One thing is to learn. To actually manipulate and all that.

What if they do start things like splicing?!

But then again, maybe I'm wrong, and I read too many books, and watch way too much tv, and get into my favorite shows too much.