

Jurassic Park’s Stars Would Be Very Different If Film Made Today - apress
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/06/jurassic-parks-stars-would-be-very-different-animals-if-the-film-were-made-today/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=20130610&utm_content=smartnewsjurassicpark1

======
protomyth
"Believing that dinosaurs could ever be cloned."

Well, you need to let that one go if you want to make a movie about dinosaurs.

~~~
sentenza
The intriguing part is, that while it is impossible to get DNA out of 15
million year old dinosaur bones, you could get dinosaur DNA fragments from the
genome of currently living birds...

~~~
jedberg
That was in the book "Jurassic Park". That's why the dinos change sexes --
because they have DNA from a reptile that does that.

~~~
strictfp
... and so it was in the film. The video which they show in the information
center talks about how they fill in the gaps from frogs to patch together a
complete DNA.

------
tocomment
So why would dinosaurs evolve feathers before evolving flight?

I'm going by this diagram (however it doesn't show where early flying
dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx would come in)
[http://biology.unm.edu/ccouncil/Biology_203/Images/Phylogeny...](http://biology.unm.edu/ccouncil/Biology_203/Images/Phylogeny/cladogramDino.gif)

~~~
jimhefferon
Staying warm is one speculation that I have read (think how chickadees can
live in -40 so feathers must be really warm).

------
csense
> dinosaur DNA is way, way too old to recover.

With today's technology. Assuming a cache of DNA isn't found in conditions
where it's unusually -- perhaps uniquely -- well-preserved. Without stitching
together multiple samples or splicing in DNA from other species to make up
gaps or degradations.

Saying it's fundamentally impossible is equivalent to saying you know
something about your unknown unknowns. _Impossible_ is a very strong claim --
not always insurmountable, e.g. thermodynamics says that certain high-
efficiency engines can't exist. But I'm skeptical that we can be super-
confident that we'll _never_ be able to clone dinosaurs.

Of course there are gaps between what happens in the book/movie and what's
possible today. That's why it's called _science fiction_ \-- if they limited
themselves to what's currently feasible, it would be a documentary.

(Actually, that would be a fun way to troll someone who's never seen the movie
-- tell them it's a documentary before you show it to them.)

~~~
jinushaun
Did you read the rest of that sentence? He didn't say it was too damaged. He
says we've only been able to find DNA 6-7 million yrs old. A far cry from the
65 million yrs for dinosaurs. Even if the technology catches up, there will be
no dinosaurs until we can find dinosaur DNA.

------
csense
Copy-pasting from this website into my other comment gave me the following:

dinosaur DNA is way, way too old to recover

Read more:
[http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/06/jurassic-p...](http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/06/jurassic-
parks-stars-would-be-very-different-animals-if-the-film-were-made-
today/#ixzz2VwtNH5zP) Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

I subsequently edited away the second line, because anyone reading this
commment thread presumably already knows how to find the article.

They must use JS to insert the second part as invisible text whenever you
select something? Does anyone want to dive into the source and analyze what
the site's doing? It's an interesting hack.

------
dnautics
there is an error here: Tasmanian devils are very much NOT extinct... I think
the correct reference is Tasmanian Tiger

~~~
cwbrandsma
Yes, but last I heard the population was not considered healthy either
(something about a facial cancer that can be passed from animal to
animal)...so give is a few months and the statement might be correct.

~~~
dnautics
not a few months, especially since facial-tumor resistant individuals have
cropped up. (one of the principal investigators in my building has done some
work characterizing the tasmanian devil situtation).

------
kh_hk
Just as a side record, a recommendation on reading the original book from
Michael Crichton is in order.

I found it engaging, including gore imagery, chaos theories and some
insightful characters.

------
sigzero
I actually don't think it would be much different at all.

~~~
dclowd9901
Doesn't the little fat kid in the beginning suggest that a velociraptor was
nothing but a big chicken? Seems he was eerily close to completely accurate.

