How it worked & Could it be done?

- By Jay Glaus

Jurassic Park --- The Story

Jurassic Park was an island off of Costa Rica where dinosaur DNA was used to create an egg. The egg was then incubated and it hatched. The result was a dinosaur. The dinosaur was then raised, and showed off to the public. But could that really happen?

Fences

Step #1…

• Amber – Hardened/fossilized Tree Sap

• Mosquito bites dinosaur• Lands in wet tree sap and gets

stuck• Wet tree sap hardens/fossilizes into

amber.

Step #2…

• Drill into amber and into mosquito

• Amber

• If there is blood in mosquito, extract it.

Drilling Amber

Some Trouble

• Scientists have extracted DNA from an extinct Weevil from about 120 – 135 million years ago.

• Only a fragment of DNA, and not blood.• Less than one millionth of entire

sequence. (less than 0.000001) • Entire sequence consists of billions of

individual base pairs.• Stomach of mosquito deteriorates DNA

Need

100.000000

To breed a true dino

More Trouble…

• It will be difficult to tell if it is Dinosaur DNA.

• Scientists can only determine what kind of DNA they have by comparing and contrasting DNA that they have seen (current living).

• Nobody has ever seen Dinosaur DNA.

What Jurassic Park Did…

• Jurassic park put sections of frog DNA into missing strands

• They made all dinosaurs female so there would be no risk of breeding.

• Breed of frogs they used could change sex.

• Dinosaurs bred and became overpopulated.

Not a true dino

We Cannot Do That!

• We cannot just “fill in” gaps with frog DNA.• Instead of Jurassic Park’s Dinosaurs that were almost all

Dinosaur, and a minute part frog, we would have almost all frog, and a minute part Dinosaur.

• Best thing Jurassic Park could have blended with Dinosaur DNA wouldn’t be frogs, but birds.

• Birds have many similar features to Dinosaurs.• We must find 100% of DNA to breed a Dinosaur. • Take time and money, but it is not impossible.• Millions of mosquitoes and fossils• Take years.

Step #3… Now it gets hard…

• DNA Usually linked to software because it contains the information on how to use the DNA to create an animal (egg).

• Program would act as “Mother Dinosaur” to create the egg with the DNA properly inside.

• Since we have never seen Dinosaur DNA, none of our programs available would know how to use the DNA to breed a Dinosaur.

21st Century…

• With the expanding technological advances of the 21st century, we may be able to find a way to get by the DNA software issue.

• Once past that, (Assuming the eggs are good) it would get easier.

• Hatch eggs in incubator (plenty of experience)

Jurassic Park Hatchery

Raising Our Dinosaur

• It is possible

• Scientists would have to figure out what to feed them, since some of the plants that existed long ago are extinct, and some plants could be poisonous to Dinosaurs.

• How do we keep Dinosaurs healthy, how do our modern germs effect Dinosaurs?

Raising Our Dinosaurs

• Our experience with raising other animals will help

• California Condors were raised in captivity (from eggs) using puppets so they wouldn’t get too comfortable with humans.

• Tricky to create an 80-foot puppet to raise Dinosaurs

Set-Backs In Jurassic Park

• Electric Fences were turned off.

• Dinosaurs escaped

• Dinosaurs bred (able to change sex)

• Many things in park were destroyed.

Set-backs• Dinosaur DNA would be very difficult to correctly

sequence without a complete, intact DNA strand for comparison.

• Any gaps in the resulting DNA sequence must be filled with dinosaur DNA; using frog DNA as the story suggests would likely produce an organism that varied from the original animal.

• In order to clone a complete DNA sequence, an oocyte (a female gametocyte or germ cell involved in reproduction) from the same organism is required. Since no dinosaurs are alive today, this would be impossible. (Don’t forget about our expanding technology though!)

• A dinosaur embryo would not be able to develop correctly without an egg from its own species.

DNA From Bones

• Scott Woodward, of Brigham Young University reported finding DNA in fossilized bones.

• However, most fossilized bones do not contain much if any DNA.

New T-Rex Found With Soft Tissue!

Paleontologists have recovered what appear to be soft tissues from the thighbone of a 70 million-

year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, potentially enabling dinosaur research to make a leap into studying the animals' physiology and perhaps even their cell biology, the research team said. Working

with the remains of a T. rex unearthed in northeastern Montana. the paleontologists spied the soft tissue when they were forced to break

the thighbone into pieces to fit it aboard a helicopter.

New T-Rex Found With Soft Tissue!

Once in the lab, the team systematically removed mineralized deposits from the bone, exposing blood

vessels, bone cells and possibly intact blood cells with their nuclei. "The tissues are still soft, transparent and flexible, and we can manipulate the vessels with our

probe," said team leader Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University. "It's a tremendous thing," Ohio University paleontologist Lawrence M. Witmer said. "It's

the first time for anything this old, and if we can start getting the biomolecules of these animals, that will take us

to a place we have never been." Schweitzer said the team is conducting further chemical analysis to determine whether individual proteins could be

isolated from the specimen. She said she did not know whether it would be possible to recover DNA from the

thighbone.

Read The Whole Article…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63318-2005Mar24.html

Are Dinosaurs ReallyReally Extinct

Bird

Similarities• Pubis (one of the three bones making up the vertebrate pelvis) shifted from an anterior to a more

posterior orientation (see Saurischia), and bearing a small distal "boot". • Elongated arms and forelimbs and clawed manus (hands). • Large orbits (eye openings in the skull). • Flexible wrist with a semi-lunate carpal (wrist bone). • Hollow, thin-walled bones. • 3-fingered opposable grasping manus (hand), 4-toed pes (foot); but supported by 3 main toes. • Reduced, posteriorly stiffened tail. • Elongated metatarsals (bones of the feet between the ankle and toes). • S-shaped curved neck. • Erect, digitgrade (ankle held well off the ground) stance with feet positioned directly below the

body. • Similar eggshell microstructure. • Teeth with a constriction between the root and the crown. • Functional basis for wing power stroke present in arms and pectoral girdle (during motion, the

arms were swung down and forward, then up and backwards, describing a "figure-eight" when viewed laterally).

• Expanded pneumatic sinuses in the skull. • Five or more vertebrae incorporated into the sacrum (hip). • Straplike scapula (shoulder blade). • Clavicles (collarbone) fused to form a furcula (wishbone). • Hinge-like ankle joint, with movement mostly restricted to the fore-aft plane. • Secondary bony palate (nostrils open posteriorly in throat). • Possibly feathers... this awaits more study. Small, possibly feathered dinosaurs were recently

found in China. It appears that many coelurosaurs were cloaked in an external fibrous covering that could be called "protofeathers."

Are Dinosaurs ReallyReally Extinct

For More Exciting Information…

Watch Jurassic Park, The lost World: Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park 2), and

Jurassic Park III (Word of Jurassic Park 4 coming in 2008)

Even though there is some fiction in the movies, there are interesting and true facts

stated!

Jurassic Park Could Have Worked If…

• More than one person fully understood computer system (Dennis Nedry).

• System wouldn’t have needed to be shut down and power wouldn’t have gone out.

• Where were ranger helicopters with tranquilizers?

• Acquired 100% DNA before attempting it.• At least used bird DNA instead of frog (no

sex change = no breeding)

The Final Verdict…

Could Jurassic Park be made?

Yes, it is possible,

maybe in the future

I hope you enjoyed this!