Possible to clone Dinosaurs?

[jonas16]

Something i have been thinking on. Is it possible to actually clone a dinosaur. Like Velociraptor or Giganotosaurus etc. It would be awesome if they cloned a Velociraptor, and then followed by the other species!

[Siara]

Something i have been thinking on. Is it possible to actually clone a dinosaur. Like Velociraptor or Giganotosaurus etc. It would be awesome if they cloned a Velociraptor, and then followed by the other species!

One problem is that the conditions that preserve bodies tend to destroy DNA. They can't get good genetic samples from the people they find in sphagnum bogs, for example, because the acidity of the water destroys DNA. I assume you'd have to use a dinosaur that had been preserved under special conditions.

There was an article a while ago about a woman who found intact genetic matter inside the bones of a T. Rex( !!! ). I THINK she just found strings of amino acids. But it was enough to test the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. So you never know... maybe some day someone will clone a dinosaur.

I'm hoping that someone clones a mammoth in my lifetime. Actually, I hope they clone at least three since they were herd animals.

[AmazingAtheist]

I'm ok with a mammoth but ..

Not something like T-Rex lol ..

Waaaaaaaaay too scary ..

[War-Junkie]

Im pretty sure there was more oxygen or something like that when they roamed thats the reason why they were so big.

I doubt that they could survive now without messing with there genes.

[Jack_of_Blades]

1. Scientists are having trouble cloning alive animals let alone extinct ones.

2. You would have to have a surrogate mother for the dinosaur, what would you

use? The main reason we can't clone the Dodo is that it's closest living relitive is

the pidgeon (much too small to mother a Dodo).

3. The most likely of clonable (extinct) animals are: the mammoth (elephant mother),

the wooly rhino (rhino mother), the moah and the elephant bird (ostridge mother)

4. The lifespan of a cloned dinosaur would be vary short (6 months to 5 years)

because of cloning defects and "new" diseases that there immune system would

be weak against.

5. It may be possible in the future (next 100 years or so) to clone smaller dinosaurs

useing large bird eggs as the surrogate mother. The DNA of the dinosaur would have

to be extracted from a fossil as useing amber is too randomized.

[thevocalist]

Im pretty sure there was more oxygen or something like that when they roamed thats the reason why they were so big.

I doubt that they could survive now without messing with there genes.

Right, it's my understand ing it was the very high Oxegon on the earth at the time, that allowed Dinasours to survive and get so large. Even id cloning was succesful. it would have to be done in an controlled environment.

[Shaftsbury]

Right, it's my understand ing it was the very high Oxegon on the earth at the time, that allowed Dinasours to survive and get so large.

I don't really buy that, dinosaurs spanned the entire range of sizes sometimes within the same family (I'm using the word "family" loosely here).

I don't think you can narrow it down to a single reason.

[Jiatao]

Something i have been thinking on. Is it possible to actually clone a dinosaur. Like Velociraptor or Giganotosaurus etc. It would be awesome if they cloned a Velociraptor, and then followed by the other species!

It might be possible, but it wouldn't be right, because we are separated by 65,000,000 years of evolution, and there will be predators that the dinosaur hadn't been evolved to fight, and if it's a carnivore it would starve because they also haven't been evolved to eat these animals.

[camlax]

I don't really buy that, dinosaurs spanned the entire range of sizes sometimes within the same family (I'm using the word "family" loosely here).

I don't think you can narrow it down to a single reason.

Don't buy it, because that is not why dinosaurs were able to get big. There is a whole branch of physiology that address that, thevocalist should read up on it.

To the OP. It is not possible to clone dinosaurs at this point (or probably ever). Cloning is done by removal of a nucleus from an egg. An intact nucleus is then placed in the egg. Not only do you need intact Dino DNA, but you need a nuclear envelope, nuclear proteins (which must be manufactured by a living cell), and many other components that simply do not exist. Baring time travel, the dinosaurs are gone from this earth forever.

[Princess Serenity]

I'm ok with a mammoth but ..

Not something like T-Rex lol ..

Waaaaaaaaay too scary ..

Mammoths are okay to clone. Plus they would have to be cloned to be adjusted to the climate.

Seriously. I don't think anyone wants to clone of one those.

[War Eagle]

Don't want to sound cynical here but you think people have watched too many reruns of Jurassic Park Trilogy Collector's Edition?

I mean come on....

[Technopath]

1. Scientists are having trouble cloning alive animals let alone extinct ones.

That's what they've been telling us.

But considering the moral and ethic implications of cloning (which I don't really care about, since I'm a scientifically curious person and not really a religious person) they're probably doing it "underground" or I've watched too many episodes of "Surface", lol.

[camlax]

That's what they've been telling us.

But considering the moral and ethic implications of cloning (which I don't really care about, since I'm a scientifically curious person and not really a religious person) they're probably doing it "underground" or I've watched too many episodes of "Surface", lol.

There is nothing morally or ethically wrong with cloning animals for research as far as science is concerned. The problem of successful cloning is real however. Its a very touch and go process, when a somatic nuclear envelope is placed in an egg, certain factors must be introduced to "trick" the egg into dividing. The failure rate at this point is immense.

Gamete cells also contain better proof reading mechanisms for DNA replication and repair. Obviously, this serves an important role; making sure your offspring are ok a the genetic level. Somatic cells lack the proof reading system of gamete cells (This is why you see cancer arise in the body, you don't see cancer occur in sperm cells however). Because of this "sloppy replication", there is a large likely hood the DNA will become too damaged during divisions and the cell will head down the lonely road of apoptosis. If this occurs too often in an embryos development, spontaneous abortion is sure to follow. Or the mothers body simply reabsorbs the embryo.

So not only do you have these problems, but it gets worse.

At the ends of your DNA are extensions known as telomeres. Throughout your life, many types of your bodies cells reproduce through mitosis. Every time they replicate, the telomeres at the end of the DNA shorten. When they get to a certain length, the cell recognizes this, and will not divide any further. Thus, the end of the line for that cell. As you age this occurs in more and more cells, making it harder for your body to run normal repair mechanisms (like if you were cut, when you are old it takes much longer to heal due to the fact less cells are capable of dividing to "fill" the cut). Eventually, loss of repair causes death (or worse, cancer).

So what does this have to do with cloning?

When you take a nuclear envelope from a somatic cell, it already has shortened telomeres. Lets say you wanted to clone an animal that lives for 5 years. You took your nuclear envelope from an animal that was 2.5 years old. After inserting this envelope into a 'empty' egg, the egg with the new nucleus would conclude that it was 2.5 years old already. So your clone is going to have a dramatically shortened life span, along with any hammy-down DNA errors occurred over the original nucleus' life span.

Edited October 9, 2007 by camlax

[WraithGod]

The post above covers the cloning issue very well.

However, in the far future, might it not be possible to "create" a creature that is dinosaur-like in appearance? Technically all living things consist of the same molecules at a genetic level. That's very far-future stretching-it sci fi, but what would be the barriers to that, beyond technology?

[Ins0mniac]

It might be possible, but it wouldn't be right, because we are separated by 65,000,000 years of evolution, and there will be predators that the dinosaur hadn't been evolved to fight, and if it's a carnivore it would starve because they also haven't been evolved to eat these animals.

Um, yeah. I don't think they would be releasing them into the wild any time soon. If they did clone them.

And I would think the security in real life would be a little better than in the Jurassic Park movies.

Edited October 16, 2007 by Ins0mniac

[camlax]

The post above covers the cloning issue very well.

However, in the far future, might it not be possible to "create" a creature that is dinosaur-like in appearance? Technically all living things consist of the same molecules at a genetic level. That's very far-future stretching-it sci fi, but what would be the barriers to that, beyond technology?

I suppose it would be entirely possible to one day be able to "turn on and off" certain genes to create an animal that appears dinosaur like. This would probably best be accomplished with birds who are a more direct decedent of dinosaurs than anything else on earth.

However in this case, we are not really creating a dinosaur, just a new species of animal that has some dinosaur like characteristics.

What would the barriers be? Many.

It would require the ability to completely map and control an animals genome. We can map genes and genomes very accurately now, the control is the problem. Its not as simple as "turning them on and off". Some genes require multiple regulators to work, some genes work on feed back systems, some genes regulators are down stream of the gene or on a different chromosome. It gets complicated real fast.

In my opinion (and despite what the sci-fi writers say), we are a long, long way off from movies like Gattaca. Though it is nice to imagine sometimes

[Wookietim]

Something i have been thinking on. Is it possible to actually clone a dinosaur. Like Velociraptor or Giganotosaurus etc. It would be awesome if they cloned a Velociraptor, and then followed by the other species!

I doubt the possibility of it - DNA tends to degrade. But it would be cool if they could..

[darkmanure]

The post above covers the cloning issue very well.

However, in the far future, might it not be possible to "create" a creature that is dinosaur-like in appearance? Technically all living things consist of the same molecules at a genetic level. That's very far-future stretching-it sci fi, but what would be the barriers to that, beyond technology?

You mean by changing it's genetics to form it? hard part to make an exact replica you have to know all the animal's genetics.

It might be possible though.

[dinotheorist]

I thought the Jurassic Park idea of obtaining the DNA from engorged mosquitoes trapped in amber was an excellent one. I later watched a PBS program in which a couple of scientists analyzed a real engorged biting fly and found something interesting.

Even though it is very difficult to re-construct dino DNA with modern technology, I think that's a "today thing." When nanotechnology and genetic engineering become more mature and intertwined, I would hesitate to set limits on what will be possible then.

I don't support the idea that dinosaurs would be highly competitive in our modern ecosystem, and that they would be able to overrun the world and widely re-establish themselves, as much as I like them. If that were possible, then birds and crocodiles would have produced evolutionary lines of dinosaur-like land animals, and reclaimed the glory of their extinct relatives.

The higher oxygen content of the atmosphere could not have been the reason that dinosaurs were able to get so big, like "thevocalist" said, but I think there was something in the environment that was a factor in that. Both the higher oxygen-to-nitrogen ratio and the larger size of the dinos could be explained by the paleogravity theory as discussed in the "gravity and dinosaurs" topic.

I think that dinosaurs cloned in today's gravity would suffer mostly in the egg stage, and then again as they reach their mature body weight if this is ever done.

Edited October 30, 2007 by dinotheorist

[UtahRaptor]

Lets just assume that one can fully succesfully clone a dinosaur. Why would you want to? Should you even bring an animal like that here to this time frame? I have studied such animals for 30 years. No one more than myself would want to see a living dinosaur of any specie. These creatures, regardles of size are just too dangerous to have here in this time frame. They take the terms "ferral" and "killer instinct" to such a degree that we simply can not handle. Of coarse this applies to the carnavores. But as for the herbavores, we have not the food for them at all. The plants have changed so much since then. They probably would not be able to consume what we have today. But like I said, no one more than I would love to see a living dinosaur. For me, especially one from the raptor family.

[DesertFox]

the problem about getting DNA from amber containing mosquitoes and other blood sucking parasites is that

the chemical that is used to stop the blood from clotting destroys DNA, and if it wasn't destroyed, the time difference

is soo great that the DNA would break down anyway.

but since the mammoths and wooly rhino's lived not so long ago, and that some specimens were snap frozen, it could

be possible

Edited November 8, 2007 by DesertFox

[frogfish]

Personally I think dinosaurs will never be alive again..But wait, who knows where evolution will take us?