They havenāt cloned a T-Rex.
The article screen-capped above has been making the rounds and I'd like to take it further than a general snopes-ing.Ā Itās aĀ āsatire siteā that doesnāt clearly advertise itself as such, and you know how those things go, but thereās some fun stuff, here. Keep in mind, I'm not an expert, just a passionate hobbyist, but before these clickbaiters take you in, hear me out:
The article claims scientists have used soft-tissue T-rex DNA to genetically modify a chicken into a non-avian theropod dinosaur. This is some real stuff being communicated through a game of telephone. Soft-tissue dino DNA has not been found in amounts large enough to sequence or replicate with current technology, that part is entirely made up.
The "Chookasaurus" is a possibility, however.
Scientists have reactivated dormant tooth-genes in some embryos, and in others they've used crocodile genes to revert the beak back into a reptilian snout.Ā
Another team is currently working on reactivating the genes for a full-length tail. No one is working on arms yet ot my knowledge, but conceivably, genes from the hoatzin, a tropical bird that has fingers until they fall off in adolescence, could be used to partially revert the forelimbs.
The result would be a theropod, because all birds are theropods, but it wouldn't be a T-rex, or any other historical species. It would be a new dinosaur species with traits similar to those of a velocirpator (the real life little ones, not the mislabeled Deinonychus from the Jurassic park movies) or compsognathus. The value is several-fold, from being able to study an animal with dinosauroid traits to understand fossil animals better, to producing zoo animals (ethically questionable but cool), to my favorite, the KFC 9-Piece bucket.
None of these embryos, thus far, have been allowed to mature. And I know someone's going to go for the "We had a whole buncha movies explaining why this is a bad idea" and to that, I'd just say:
āScience goes terribly rightā is generally a boring movie premiseĀ
Jurassic Park was an incompetently constructed zoo, largely to serve the needs of the plot.
A chicken with teeth may seem scary but dogs, cats and toddlers all have teeth too, and they rarely engage in the eating of adult humans.
To paraphrase Bart Simpson, "God schmod, I want my chickensaurus".
