#unextinction

Did y'all know that there's a program looking to un-extinct various animals across Europe??? It's known as Rewilding and it looks SO AMAZING. They're best known for Project Tauros, breeding Aurochs back into existence, but also are working to return wolf breeds, truly wild horses, deer/elk/ibex, birds like the Dalmatian Pelican, and types of small rodents back!! Their aim is to return key species into the ecosystems that lost them due to hunting/poaching/general human expansion!

Not only are they working from selective, hands on, breeding, but also releasing groups into wildlife reserves to repopulate the needed areas in passive form!! On TOP of that, they're also working with locals to build better relationships with the animals!! Eco-tourism building, guard dog and fencing programs (for the carnivore programs), and even refusing to add in breeds that could endanger humans (like adding fighting bulls to the Auroch's breed pool)!!

Anywho I can never become a scientist in that area of expertise cause I love art too much and I hate that much math/reading, but I am SUPER fascinated and intrigued and thought y'all might find it neat!!

Link to their page + an article Abt the Tauros program!!

https://rewildingeurope.com/

The article screen-capped above has been making the rounds and I'd like to take it further than a general snopes-ing. It’s a “satire site” that doesn’t clearly advertise itself as such, and you know how those things go, but there’s 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. 

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:

“Science goes terribly right” is generally a boring movie premise 

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.