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American Museum of Natural History
Course: American Museum of Natural History > Unit 1
Lesson 4: Dinosaur fossils- Fossil preparation
- What Is a fossil?
- How do we know where to look for dinosaur fossils?
- How do we know where to look for dinosaur fossils?
- How are dinosaur fossils discovered and collected?
- How are dinosaur fossils discovered and collected?
- How are dinosaur fossils prepared in the laboratory?
- How are dinosaur fossils prepared in the laboratory?
- Preparing dinosaur fossils
- Inside the Collections: Paleontology and the Big Bone Room
- Can we clone extinct dinosaurs from DNA preserved in their fossils?
- Can we clone dinosaurs from DNA?
- Barnum Brown: The man who discovered Tyrannosaurus rex
- Quiz: Dinosaur Fossils
- Exploration Questions: Dinosaur Fossils
- Answers to Exploration Questions: Dinosaur Fossils
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Can we clone extinct dinosaurs from DNA preserved in their fossils?
Paleontologists and molecular biologists have searched for a couple of decades to find and replicate DNA from some non-avian dinosaur fossil. But to date, no results have been obtained, either from fossil bones or teeth preserved in sediments or from a fossil preserved in amber, as was done in the film, Jurassic Park. To successfully isolate DNA from a long-extinct dinosaur, let alone clone one, scientists would have to overcome numerous serious challenges, including contamination and deterioration of the original DNA. Created by American Museum of Natural History.
Want to join the conversation?
- Is cloning animals good or bad? Some people say it's good for us humans because we benefit from it by being able to discover new medicine. But what about the animals being cloned? They don't get anything in return for being our test subjects, so...
Many websites about cloning each have very different opinions, so I'm not really sure about it.(14 votes)- you could be eaten by a T rex or slammed down by a Ankylosaurus!(5 votes)
- Is it even a good idea to clone dinosaurs? (if it will ever be possible)
They probably wouldn't be able to survive in our environment, so what would they eat? Where would they live?(9 votes)- Most likely they would be kept in a human-controlled environments. As a matter of fact, there is an ongoing project of creating a dinosaur-like creature by genetic reverse engineering of a chicken. It's led by Jack Horner, the paleontologist. I don't know what is the current status of a project, but you can find some more info here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Horner_(paleontologist)#Build_a_Dinosaur_Project(3 votes)
- wait..... does that mean that we have extinct dinosaurs in the future dang i would be very HAPPY.(3 votes)
- Um, why, the human race would probably go extinct depending on which species they brought back.😰(1 vote)
- If we could find a like thing that could, would we be able to clone other things like humans with the thing?(3 votes)
- How exactly would you clone a dinosaur if you had all the material needed?(2 votes)
- I believe you would have to - if it's preserved really well- extract some DNA samples from inside of the bone and if it's not that well preserved then even the smallest of hair would do for the cloning.(2 votes)
- if it was possible, what dines would you clone? which dines would you want to clone first?(2 votes)
- Most likely dinosaurs that we get the most DNA of the soonest — for example, if we get enough DNA to recreate an allosaurus or a brachiosaurus sooner than any other dinosaur, we'll recreate those ones first. We want to clone as soon as possible, so we'll do whatever it takes, and definetely won't waste time when we have enougb DNA to clone at least one dinosaur.(2 votes)
- Why not just take DNA from the bone marrow of fossils?(1 vote)
- There would not be enough DNA to analyze. Though, amber may be a good substance. Specifically mosquitos.(3 votes)
- I think its possible cause birds are decendants of theripod dinosaurs and birds have their entire dna sequnece in each of their blood cells . so this probably means that theripod dinosaurs had thier entire dna sequence in each of their blood cells .So It is probably possible to clone theripod dinosaurs!(0 votes)
- ay i got a question why in the world do you copy someones science video about dinosaurs why?(0 votes)
- It's an interesting topic and why could you not just use a video that someone else made to watch? Like if your teacher wanted you to watch "Bill Nye" or something.(1 vote)
Video transcript
Despite all of what you see in movies and
science fiction, and some of its very entertaining, and you know some nice
ideas in there, tantalizing ideas, we cannot clone a dinosaur. We cannot create a Jurassic Park. For a
number of reasons first there isn't a lot of DNA preserved in the ancient fossils, and that
that is, is severely damaged. We're nowhere near ever finding a whole genome for an extinct
dinosaur. Maybe in a few years, maybe down the line, we
might finally get some really reliable evidence on a DNA sequence from a dinosaur, from some tissue of an ancient dinosaur, but
it will only be a tiny, tiny smattering of that huge genome. It could be as
many as thirty thousand genes, and we might get a
signal from a couple of them, and that certainly won't be enough to
clone a dinosaur. So I think the answer to this
question is it's impossible to clone a dinosaur.