Jurassic Park

[Floyd Waddle]

=Joshua Mularella (jmularel at lynx.dac.neu.edu) wrote:

> My name is Joshua Mularella and I'm a college junior doing a research
> paper on the possibility, or lack thereof, of Jurassic Park. I have no
> idea where to begin and was wondering if any of you had any opinion on
> the matter. Your comments are greatly appreciated.

My impression is that nobody's going to find enough fossil dinosaur DNA 
to make a dinosaur as was done in the movie.  (Besides which the movie 
was based on the rather dumb notion that people smart enough to make 
dinosaurs were so stupid as to try to keep them behind an electric 
fence.) Birds, however, are modified dinosaurs, and they likely contain 
a lot of unexpressed relic genes not much changed from the time they 
were expressed in the dinosaur ancestors. If I were a scientist living 
50 - 100 years in the future, when the requisite knowledge for making 
the appropriate genetic manipulations will likely be available, and if 
I had the inclination and money to make a dinosaur, I would start with 
a chicken. Actually, I would start by building a multilevel containment 
system with fail-safes designed and reviewed by multiple experts. Then, 
I would start with a chicken.