• Question: do you think scientist will be able to make dinosaurs

    Asked by whew442gem on 12 Nov 2021.
    • Photo: Craig Anderson

      Craig Anderson answered on 12 Nov 2021: last edited 12 Nov 2021 2:14 pm

      Dinosaur DNA is often too old and damaged for us to look at so it would be difficult to get it right. We only became certain that lots of dinosaurs had feathers very recently! Some other animals from more recently in history are being sequenced with the aim of being resurrected because they’ve been frozen in ice, like mammoths. A good question though is should we try to revive extinct species? I personally don’t think it’s a good idea and instead we should be looking after the life we have.

      Don’t forget, birds evolved from dinosaurs and are awesome!

    • Photo: Joaquin de Navascues

      Joaquin de Navascues answered on 12 Nov 2021:

      No, I don’t think so. There is a research group that is trying to bring back woolly mammoths:
      https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-back-woolly-mammoth-from-extinction

      This is a far easier thing to achieve than bringing back dinosaurs, and many scientists are very skeptical that this will be ever accomplished, whether it should be done at all, and whether it would be useful for anything.

    • Photo: Frankie Macrae

      Frankie Macrae answered on 15 Nov 2021: last edited 15 Nov 2021 8:46 am

      I think we possibly could at some point in the future. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we should!

    • Photo: Chris Pyatt

      Chris Pyatt answered on 15 Nov 2021:

      I would love to see a dinosaur in the flesh (or any extinct animal really) but they lived such a long time ago that finding DNA of sufficient quality to enable cloning would be next to impossible. Plus you have to remember that the world has changed a lot since then, and you may well struggle to find something they can eat!

    • Photo: Magdalena Sutcliffe

      Magdalena Sutcliffe answered on 15 Nov 2021:

      Bad idea, haven’t you seen Jurassic Park? 😉
      Luckily, this is not very likely because the DNA from dinosaurs is very poorly preserved due to its age and exposure to many environmental factors. Also, we might not be able to find a good cell to put this DNA into to turn it into a viable organism. DNA is a huge part of life but only DNA in cells can produce organisms.

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