Add one chicken egg, one crazy and determined paleontologist, and some real life Jurassic Park science, and there you have it.

John “Jack” Horner has a vision.  When he walks into of one of his classes to give a lecture, instead of carrying a projector or some field notes, he wants to walk in with  a live dinosaur.  His own creation, hatched in his lab from a bird egg.  “It’s small, but bigger than a chicken,” he writes in his new book, How to Build a Dinosaur. “Let’s say the size of a turkey, one day maybe even the size of an emu.” The emu-size dinosaur, he adds, “might have a muzzle or a couple of handlers.”

Sound familiar? Horner was the scientific adviser for the Jurassic Park films. The difference is that unlike in the film, Horner doesn’t need Dino DNA to recreate the reptiles. Which is good, because dinosaur DNA has never been recovered from any source. Horner is working on genetically ‘tweaking’ bird DNA to activate genes that have been dormant due to evolution. and since the birds are direct descendants from dinosaurs, it wont be long before Horner completes his mission. He guesses he will have hatched  his first dinosaur within the next 5 years.

Read a more detailed article HERE.

I don’t think I have ever been more excited for anything. This could go a few different ways: the dinosaur hatches and it’s a huge step for the scientific community, and helps students in paleontology better understand a dino’s life. Alternativley, it could be a recreation of Jurassic Park, and we will all be eaten alive. What I’m afraid of, is that every creationist’s head will explode from trying to religiously explain away the  hidden dino genes in a chicken. Big mess. Either way, I’m still excited.

-artandstars

There have been some rainy grey days in Vancouver this fall, but it seems like the weather is going to be nice to us for a while.  Lets celebrate with some SCIENCE!

Check out this awesome video from 1952 called A is for Atom, explaining the basics of what an atom is and how atoms release energy. This is an artifact from the effort of the United States to promote the peaceful uses of atomic energy after the bombing of Hiroshima.

-iceonthetrail