Birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than any other creature on earth at the present time. Don't be so quick to assume that just because a lizard resembles a dinasuar more than a bird, that there is a greater degree of genetic comonality. A theory circulating is that dinosaurs had feathers, and there have been fossils found indicating such.
The use of chickens is a fair choice, it is very easy to breed chickens, and you can eat your mistakes. Can't necessarly say the same for pigeon.
http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/feather3.ht m
But I suppose chickens are much easier to work with in a lab than Komodo dragons. Try getting a DNA sample from a giant lizard with sharp teeth encrusted with lethal bacteria!
Well, getting a DNA sample is actually much easier than one would want it to be. Surviving is the tricky part.
The use of chickens is a fair choice, it is very easy to breed chickens, and you can eat your mistakes.
Not to be unduly incredulous, but what makes you think you'd actually want to eat any animal whose genetic modifications have led to "failure"? Assuming you were successful enough to get something resembling non-mush, how many toxins might this ungodly genetic abomination have synthesized it its brief, torturous existence? Corn that's been spliced with a potato, that I'll eat. Devolved chicken?
Software is made to be reverse engineered; chickens are not.
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under-paid karma whore
That story has absolutely zero news content
by
SIGFPE
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· Score: 2
The thing about chicken teeth is old as the hills and the rest is pure speculative content of the type that was bandied around at the time of JP1. I can't even blame/. - it was actually reported by the Beeb. Shame on them.
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I work in a research facility at UC Riverside (sysadmin), I can tell you there is a BUTTLOAD of money out there for research... it is however heavily competed for... the Nation Science Foundation, Air Force, large corporations hand out money like candy
BUT, your right -- theres never gonna be a research grant for makeing a dinosaur chicken simply because the idea is stupid:)
What I find intriguing about this is what might happen if (read: when) someone with an underdeveloped sense of ethics tries a similar technique on humans. I've read a few articles about how modern humans may not have derived strictly from the Cro-Magnon strain, but by miscegenation between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. Ethical questions aside, it would be an intersting window into human origins, and could clear up more than one debate on the subject...
Ethical questions not aside, that really squicks me. Someday they'll be able to run just such an experiment and bring a "retro-hybrid" fetus of that sort to term. And what do you do with a kinda-sorta-human living experiment like that? Terminate it when you're finished with the experiment? Raise it as part of a regular human family? Raise it in a Skinner box? Put it on a subway in Brooklyn and see who notices?
What I find intriguing about this is what might happen if (read: when) someone with an underdeveloped sense of ethics tries a similar technique on humans
Sure, life is cheap. Although it's maybe more likely that we'll come at it from the other side.
Let me present this to you. There are more differences between zebra and shetland pony DNA (and they can produce viable offspring) than there are between human and chimpanzee or even gorilla.
There's also some nice work (by Greg Paul I think) that shows deinonychus as a giant wattled killer turkey. Challenging, but fun. It starts from the premise of "So, why do you think dinosaurs didn't have feathers?"
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Slashdot Mirror
http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/feather3.ht m
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-321.htm
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5471AWXgUkI :2 04.202.137.111/sections/science/DailyNews/dinobird 980623.html+feathered+dinosaur&hl=en
Well, getting a DNA sample is actually much easier than one would want it to be. Surviving is the tricky part.
:-)
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
Not to be unduly incredulous, but what makes you think you'd actually want to eat any animal whose genetic modifications have led to "failure"? Assuming you were successful enough to get something resembling non-mush, how many toxins might this ungodly genetic abomination have synthesized it its brief, torturous existence? Corn that's been spliced with a potato, that I'll eat. Devolved chicken?
Software is made to be reverse engineered; chickens are not.
~~~~~~
under-paid karma whore
The thing about chicken teeth is old as the hills and the rest is pure speculative content of the type that was bandied around at the time of JP1. I can't even blame /. - it was actually reported by the Beeb. Shame on them.
--
-- SIGFPE
BUT, your right -- theres never gonna be a research grant for makeing a dinosaur chicken simply because the idea is stupid :)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Corn that's been spliced with a potato, that I'll eat. Devolved chicken?
... PORN! With chicks, too! Yay!
Hmmmm. Potato + Corn, spliced, equals
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Ethical questions not aside, that really squicks me. Someday they'll be able to run just such an experiment and bring a "retro-hybrid" fetus of that sort to term. And what do you do with a kinda-sorta-human living experiment like that? Terminate it when you're finished with the experiment? Raise it as part of a regular human family? Raise it in a Skinner box? Put it on a subway in Brooklyn and see who notices?
Weird weird weird.
OK,
- B
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http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
A nice speculative rendition of feathered raptors can be found here:
http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~luisrey/html/custom.htmThere's also some nice work (by Greg Paul I think) that shows deinonychus as a giant wattled killer turkey. Challenging, but fun. It starts from the premise of "So, why do you think dinosaurs didn't have feathers?"
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.