The Lexington Herald-Leader's website Kentucky.com has an article on dinosaur hunter Jack Horner, an honorary doctorate and paleontologist proclaimed to be the model for Alan Grant, the hero of Michael Crichton's blockbuster novel Jurassic Park.
Horner, author of How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to be Forever, claims he will be able to create a dinosaur from a chicken egg within the next five years.
According to the article by Amy Wilson,
Horner explained to Wired magazine in 2009: "Birds are descendants of dinosaurs. They carry their DNA. So in its early stages, a chicken embryo will develop dinosaur traits like a long tail, teeth and three-fingered hands. If you can find the genes that cancel the tail and fuse the fingers to build a wing — and turn those genes off — you can grow animals with dinosaur characteristics."
He adds that the stuff is there in the chicken, and "we know exactly what to do" to make the chickenosaurus.
Unlike my concerns about Craig Venter's experiments, curiosity makes me want to ask how one can manipulate the genes of a chicken embryo that grows inside of a hard shell egg. I'd kind of like to see what becomes of Horner's work if he succeeds.
Let's face it...seeing a live dinosaur would be pretty cool. Of course, technically alligators are dinosaurs and I've seen several of them in swampy south Georgia.
If Horner's work proves successful it would seem to offer strong evidence in support of evolution. It would also damage my theory expressed in my book Divine Evolution, which says Australopithecus might have been a prototype but was not an ancestor of homo sapiens.
"This is evolutionary proof," [Horner] says. "You can't do this until evolution works."
Comments
Good luck in finding the "Ark of the Covenant" ala Raiders of the Lost Ark, another Steven Spielberg movie. It's sad that Christians have not embraced the great Dead Sea scrolls.
Thanks for reading and your comment. The relevance of the Dead Sea scrolls to the article escapes me, however.
I've seen discussions like this before, this seems more likely since it's pretty generic. I've heard "Lets recreate X" and that seemed more far fetched than 'lets induce primitive traits'.
Agreed. That's why I'd like to see if it's possible. Five years isn't that long to wait (it falls within my expected life span) and if God did use some form of evolution to create species as well as differentiate characteristics in subspecies, I'd like to know before I die.
I'd bank on it. Jack's working with some really clever and adept genetics folks.
They've already clearly demonstrated that all the genes necessary to turn a chicken embryo into a feathered theropod are there; the challenge now is figuring out which proteins are needed at what point in the development to "switch on" the dormant genes.
There has been some success injecting a protein-loaded virus into the early embryo; team at UWisc. grew teeth.
They've got the chicken genome already; technically, we're two years into the five - and I'd still give odds they make it.
But I gotta correct you on one thing: gators are not dinosaurs.
One of the key defining characteristics of all dinosaurs is the way their legs connect at the hip - instead of the splayed out stance of a reptile like a lizard or crocodillian, their hind (or only) legs are more "upright" - think ostrich or emu... or take a good hard look at a turkey or chicken thigh and drumstick next time you have one.
John Leonard: You have to learn to turn the other cheek whenever someone criticizes Christianity. Religions are not people therefore they have no rights. You don't see the Jews trying to force their religion onto everybody else do you?
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