Dinosaurs DNA New Creatures

On Sunday November 15th, 2009 the television show 60 Minutes aired a documentary about dinosaurs. Featured was a doctor who was an archeologist. His specialty was excavating dinosaur fossils.

One day he discovered a giant fossil of a Tyrannosaurs Rex. It was found in a very remote area where there were no roads. This fossil was in the side of a stone cliff and it was upright. It was very tall and was embedded fifty feet into the cliff. Plaster casts were made of this huge creature. Transport out of the remote site was arranged by helicopter. When transport arrived a plaster cast of the giant femur bone (the upper leg bone) of the Tyrannosaurs Rex began to be lifted. But the plaster cast was too heavy for the helicopter to lift. The doctor was forced to have it broken in half.

There were bone fragments that chipped off and were gathered by the Doctor. He sent them to a female colleague whose field of expertise was ancient bones. She was eager to receive the shards of bone. She related to 60 Minutes the story of what happened when she received the bone fragments and that which transpired. The doctor said that she began by examining the bone shards under a microscope. It was exciting to see inside bones that were sixty million years old. She took a look.Immediately she said this dinosaur was a female and that she was pregnant. She said that the upright dinosaurs are related to birds. What she discovered next were traces of the tracks left by the creatures blood vessels. This was remarkable and never before seen.

One day she was placing bone fragments into acid to remove the outer layer of bone. She left them in the acid a little too long and noticed something unusual. There was a jelly like substance emitting out of the inside of the bone pieces. She took a look under the microscope. What she saw was amazing. She was viewing the impossible. There it was right before her eyes. There were fragments of intact pieces of blood vessels. The acid reconstituted the soft tissue of the blood vessel fragments in the dinosaur's bones. They were sixty million year old blood vessels and they belonged to a Tyrannosaurs Rex dinosaur. She repeated the process over and over again with the bone specimens and the results were the same every time. It was certain and there was no doubt about it.

Immediately she telephoned the doctor who had sent her the bone shards. He was very excited and he came to see for himself. What a discovery he said. This means that sixty million year old DNA has now be recovered. He went on to say that when a chicken is an embryo it has a tail. He showed a picture of exactly this. Then a gene kicks in and stops the tail from developing. Instead feathers develop. He points out these similarities. A chicken walks upright and has three toes. So does the upright dinosaur. Now this tail gene can be activated and the chicken would grow a tail.

The doctor goes on to say that a new creature can be created. He called it the Dino-Chicken. He says for us to imagine a creature that is a really big chicken with sharp teeth tyrannosaurs legs, and tiny dinosaur arms. Yikes!

The interviewer asked him if it could be possible today to create the Dino-Chicken from recovered and restored DNA. The doctor's reply was absolutely no doubt about it. I can assure you there will be the Dino-Chicken.