The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => The Fridge => Topic started by: rhombus on December 08, 2016, 06:00:01 PM
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According to an article (http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)31193-9) published in the journal Current Biology, scientists have discovered the tail of a small dinosaur encased in amber. The amber had already been polished for jewellery and the seller thought it was plant material inside the amber, but on closer inspection it turned out to be the tail of a feathered dinosaur about the size of a sparrow. The specimen includes the preserved bones, flesh, skin, and feathers of the small dinosaur. This gives us our best look to date at what these feathers looked like, how they were incorporated into the dinosaur's anatomy, and other details that we have been unable to gleam from fossil records. Additionally there are hints that some of the organic material may have been retained in trace amounts.
Overall, a truly amazing find. :yes
Further Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/health/dinos...trnd/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/health/dinosaur-tail-trapped-in-amber-trnd/index.html)
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38224564 (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38224564)
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Quite fascinating indeed. I've read an article about this find last week... Do you think it could've been Guido's tail? :D
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Ah sounds very interesting I'll have to read it later on today
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Quite fascinating indeed. I've read an article about this find last week... Do you think it could've been Guido's tail? :D
If so then Guido met quite a sticky end. :p
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Yes yes he did but I will read it great find
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If so then Guido met quite a sticky end. :p
Well, at the very least he had to part with his tail at some point... Hm-m-m, I'm sure there's a way to turn this into a funny little fanfic. :lol:
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Well, at the very least he had to part with his tail at some point... Hm-m-m, I'm sure there's a way to turn this into a funny little fanfic. laugh.gif
Well, I won't stop you :lol
Really interesting news either way, I completely missed that we had a thread about it here :wow
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That is a great find. Imagine what they can discover from it.
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Do you think with fossil's they could bring back a dinosaur?
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Do you think with fossil's they could bring back a dinosaur?
Pretty much no chance of that. The unfortunate thing is DNA itself will slowly decay over time. I don't remember the exact number, but once DNA get's around a million or so years old, it decays to the point that enough of the genetic code is lost, and it can't be used for cloning.
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Yup, the article I've read addressed this question and they said there was no snowball chance in hell a complete strand of DNA could be recovered from that tail.
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Do you think with fossil's they could bring back a dinosaur?
The closest way to creating a dinosaur is by manipulating the DNA of birds, such as chickens. This has been done already, and embryos have shown signs of having teeth and I think other things as well (although they are not allowed to hatch far as I know). Theoretically, it might be possible to create something like a dinosaur this way. But a specific species of dinosaur that we already know existed, such as gallimimus, velociraptor, etc? Very unlikely.
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Do you think with fossil's they could bring back a dinosaur?
The closest way to creating a dinosaur is by manipulating the DNA of birds, such as chickens. This has been done already, and embryos have shown signs of having teeth and I think other things as well (although they are not allowed to hatch far as I know). Theoretically, it might be possible to create something like a dinosaur this way. But a specific species of dinosaur that we already know existed, such as gallimimus, velociraptor, etc? Very unlikely.
I mean, someday we'll be able to get something close just by manipulating DNA ourselves, but it won't really be any dinosaur from the past. It'll be our best approximation of a dinosaur from the past. We won't have any DNA to compare it to, just what fossil evidence that makes us THINK that dinosaur was like, to make a new one out of, by splicing and manipulating the DNA of dinosaur ancestors that are still around today, like birds.