Today's scientists are recreating dinosaurs through genetic engineering. Sounds like science fiction? Not any longer.
Through rapid advances in genetics, scientists are discovering the genetic traits of dinosaurs in the DNA of birds. They are showing that it is possible to bring back teeth, long tails and hands in place of wings. In Dinosaurs: Return to Life, learn why the dream of recreating the dinosaur genome is coming closer to reality.
Ever since Mary Higby Schweitzer peeked inside the fractured thighbone of a Tyrannosaurus rex, the introverted scientist's life hasn't been the same. Neither has the field of paleontology.
In 2004, Schweitzer gazed through a microscope in her laboratory at North Carolina State University and saw lifelike tissue that had no business inhabiting a fossilized dinosaur skeleton: fibrous matrix, stretchy like a wet scab on human skin; what appeared to be supple bone cells, their three-dimensional shapes intact; and translucent blood vessels that looked as if they could have come straight from an ostrich at the zoo.
An alternate hypothesis has been suggested that the "soft" tissues are in actual fact bacterial biofilms. Kaye TG, Gaugler G, Sawlowicz Z (2008) Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms.
Whilst certain organisations continue to parrot the phrase "no transitional fossils have ever been found" the list of species which possess transitional features continues to grow.
Epidexipteryx hui, Protoavis, Protarchaeopteryx, Archeopteryx, Avimimus, Sinosauropteryx, Caudipteryx, Rahonavis, Shuvuuia, Sinornithosaurus, Beipiasaurus, Microraptor, Nomingia, Epidendrosaurus, Cryptovolans, Scansoriopteryx, Yixianosaurus, Dilong, Pedopenna, Jinfengopteryx, Sinocalliopteryx, Sinornis, Ambiortus, Hesperornis, Ichthyornis
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