

Birds may be paedomorphic dinosaurs - tokenadult
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/birds-may-be-paedomorphic-dinosaurs/

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vibragiel
Also, let's not forget that, in cladistics taxonomy (virtually the only one
used by scientists in scientific journals), birds _are_ dinosaurs.

Dinosauria (dinosaurs) -> Saurischia (three-pronged hips) -> Theropoda
(bipedal saurischians) -> Tetanurae (stiff tails) -> Coelosauria (birds,
tyrannosaurs, velociraptors, etc.) -> Maniraptora (hand snatchers) -> Avialae
(bird wings) -> Euornithes (bird tails) -> Aves (birds)

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bambax
There was a really nice article by Stephen Jay Gould about the paedomorphism
of Mickey Mouse; it can be found online (in PDF)
<http://athmarc.allthingshuman.net/images/PDFs/mickey.pdf>

It's a different discussion though; Mickey Mouse is a human creature; in order
to appeal to a broader audience it " _was_ evolved" to retain juvenile
features.

Birds used paedomorphism for different reasons of course, but it is true that
we find them more cute and less threatening than dinosaurs.

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mattdeboard
My daughter just asked me Sunday what group birds belong to, I'm looking
forward to seeing her expression when I tell her "dinosaurs".

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iwwr
Does that mean that an existing bird DNA can be minimally edited to express
into a more lifesize dinosaur?

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fhars
Birds, being dinosaurs and having the size they have, already _are_ lifesize
dinosaurs, no DNA editig required.

As to the question you probably meant to ask, no editing the DNA of a living
organism to match the unknown DNA of an extinct organism it separated from a
100 Million years ago is impossible.

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anonymous
And here we see the importance of commas, why you shouldn't separate the
negative from the verb by a mile and the difference between "no editing ... is
impossible" - all edits are possible and "no, editing ... is impossible" - the
edits are impossible.

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jinushaun
I thought the classic example of paedomorphism was domesticated dogs. Research
has shown that if you take wild foxes and select for non-aggression towards
humans, after several generations, you end up with essentially foxes that
retain their juvenile features and bear a strong resemblance to domesticated
dogs. (Floppy ears, shorter snout, spotted fur, earlier sexual maturity, etc)
You get all these physical features by simply selecting for tameness.

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nnnnni
Jurassic Park taught us about this nearly 20 years ago!

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stefanve
so men did walk with dinosaurs after all :)

