Jurassic Park/World: Is it possible?

[Dimetrodon]

https://www.scienceworld.ca/stories/sci ... -mosquito/

According to Dr. Corey Nislow, a professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a former genome scientist at Stanford University, DNA can be fragile. Though a great option for preservation, Dr. Nislow says it decays too quickly to survive for millions of years, even when trapped in amber.

“Up until recently, the oldest DNA that was successfully retrieved was about 500,000 years old,” he says. “That record has been broken and now stands at 1.2 million years, but still, when you're talking about dinosaurs, you’re talking about more than sixty million years.”

Scientists have successfully cloned animals since the release of Jurassic Park, including Dolly the Sheep in 1996 and embryos of a gastric-brooding frog (declared extinct in 2002) in 2013. Both attempts were short lived: Dolly lived six years before she died from a lung infection and the embryos only survived a few days. Cloning prehistoric animals, Dr. Nislow says, is a more challenging process.

“It really boils down to time. DNA breaks down. The hydrogen bonds that hold DNA bases together break down over time, making it difficult to decode,” he adds.

All in all, it is not likely to obtain a DNA sample from creatures that died out so long ago. DNA is complex, but fragile and cannot be expected to survive 65 million years in a readable state, assuming any of it is intact at all. While the original movie was great, it is very unrealistic, so don't get too excited about the prospect.

[Fred Rimbert]

A little wink to the admin, photo taken on the road between Montreal and Quebec yesterday

IMG_2648.jpeg (3.94 MiB) Viewed 218 times

[Dimetrodon]

Wow that's cool, so thanks for sharing.

I wish where I live had more things like that.