Could we bring back a Dinosaur? It is a fascinating idea. After watching a documentary on the ‘Dinosaur Mummy’ found in the badlands of the Dakotas I was forced to ponder the idea once again, Since last night I saw adverts for a Discovery documentary on this very topic that will be on next week I decided I should record my ideas on the subject post haste.
Pretty much everyone has seen the movie ‘Jurassic Park’ where scientists find strands of dino DNA inside assorted biting dino-pests preserved in ancient amber. The problem with this scenario is no such viable DNA has ever been found. It is highly unlikely any has survived intact over the many millions of years seperating us from the end of the Cretaceous when dino-kind had a very bad day.
Given the unlikelihood of finding a T Rex blueprint, one might think the idea of bringing them or any of their relatives back is an idea well and truly dead. “Time to consign the idea to the pages of fantasy stories!”, one might say… but not so fast!
There are other approaches to the problem. Researchers are churning out genomes of many, many species per year even now, including that of the Mammoth and the Neaderthal. The rate at which this happens is expected to reach a species per day per machine in less than a decade. That opens up a whole new possibility: reverse engineering.
Let us say we have the genomes of most living dinosaurs sequenced and sitting in databases on our computers of the 2030’s. “Living dinosaurs? Where?”, you say.
Open your window. Listen to those little dinos chirping, cheeping, singing and in general making a racket as they fly about. They are direct descendants of the dinosaur Raptor clade. Not a side shoot: a direct, bona-fide descendant.
So for a start let us run our AI programs and use our species genome data base to work our way backwards through bird ancestors. The results will not be a full dinosaur genome but we will be getting closer. We might even find some 100,000 year old bits of DNA from dead species in the Russian tundra with which we can cross check our calculations.
We can work the other direction to some extent as well, if we work backwards in the mammalian, crocodilian and reptilian trees until we get to the common ancestor between each of them and the dinosaur clan. It will be rough and full of holes, but it adds constraints and that is what we need.
It is still not enough though. The next step requires we that we understand how DNA and DNA regulation actually builds a creature. If we can infer the DNA required for a feature we can tweak our model genome to fit. Now the coup de grace: if you have seen a documentary called ‘Dino Lab’ you will know where I am going. We now have the ability to roughly model the entire animal and to use AI learning programs to understand how it moved and what its metabolism was like. We have fossilized stomach contents. We have examples of skin and organs fossilized in the ‘Dino Mummy’. With a few more orders of magnitude of computing power, we might run Monte Carlo simulations of entire sections of ancient ecosystems until we find the best match to fossil evidence.
With those constraints on reality we will, before the end of this century, be able to infer with reasonable confidence the genome of a dinosaur and, if we wish to do so, bring it back. It will not be a perfect reproduction but it will certainly be good enough to make a day at the zoo a rather exciting affair!
Forget dinosaurs. By the time we get to the level of technology that you’re talking about (ie, being able to tweak the DNA to add in physical features), we could pretty well build whatever beasties we wanted. Griffins, dragons, pokemon, unicorns, wookies, ents, insects the size of the station wagons, three-headed dogs, grizzly bears that actually are as cuddly as they look, and the list goes on.
If nothing else, it’ll probably spell the end of green-screen film making technology.
That is all true to some extent. However your insects will not be true insects because they only scale to large sizes in a very Oxygen rich atmosphere.
But lets stick with dinosaurs because that is what I am writing about.
Tiny little organic turbochargers.
(Still holding out for a pet Dodo)
I’d like to request a critter with an appetite for jihadis and collectivists. Also, pissing gasoline would be a nice feature.
Gasoline will be dealt with in another long tech posting so I won’t go into that now and spoil it by showing all my best info ahead of time.
Sure, most of us have seen Jurassic Park, although, the level and possibilities inherent in the capabilities you’re musing about are quite a bit reminiscent of another film (and story)…
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Well, technically, what you’re talking about is not bringing back the dinosaurs. It’s creating copies of the dinosaurs. There’s no guarantee whatever that the DNA sequences of your versions match the DNA sequences of the originals, or that they have the same metabolic paths, or the same neural microanatomy, or the same behavior. At most, you can get something that is a close fit to a high-probability conjecture at those based on inference from incomplete and low-resolution remains.
I mean, if you told me that some future civilization would one day create copies of present-day human beings based on the records and remains we had left, I wouldn’t take that as a promise of resurrection—not even if they were going to have every word I’d ever written, online or in print.
Which is not to say it wouldn’t be an interesting enterprise. But it wouldn’t be “reviving the dinosaurs.”
Yeah, it’s separating. Defanatally.
Yeah, it’s separating. Defanatally.
NO!!! Don’t bring back the Dinosaurs! They ruined the environment by getting into a slanging match with some asteroids, then died out and left us the mess to clean up! That’s being socially irresponsible!
The most likely nearest relatives today are birds, and they crap everywhere without cleaning up after themselves!
And if you bring back Tyrranosauroi, what are you going to feed them? Would modern animals be good for their acids? And would PETA let you bring back Brontosauroi, if they are just going to be fed to the carnivors? You’re opening a whole can of new-and-improved worms if you go down this path.
If you really want creatures from pre-history, just go to any parliament and you can see troglodytes galore!
I smell a remake!
Never mind the cloning of dinosaurs or grizzlies or dragons, the big fear is that someone (probably in Texas) will clone more George ‘Dubya’ Bush’s that you shake a stick at. Not leaving it there, all of the useless, ineficient, grasping politicians who have passed on could return for another go. A horrifying thought. On the other hand, they could clone Elvis and I could ask him why he was laughing at the live performance of “Are you lonseome tonight?” I never did find out.
I always hoped that if the terraforming of Mars or any other planet became feasible, something like this would play a part in it.
But I tend to agree that the real surprises might be when artificial life isn’t based on extinct or endangered species, but original creations.
I’m thinking the hardcore enviros will shit a brick.