• Question: With the correct technology, would it be possible to create/bring back dinosaurs like in the Jurassic Park series?

    Asked by anon-181166 on 4 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Hannah Farley

      Hannah Farley answered on 4 Jun 2018:

      In theory I would say yes (bear in mind I’ve also told someone you could hypothetically genetically engineer a unicorn so I tend to be optimistic). This is because, as in Jurassic Park, we actually do know a lot about dinosaurs. There are creatures alive today that were alive then; their direct descendants are still around. So we know a lot about the genetic make up that we’d need to recreate. HOWEVER it would take a long time (for reference, editing one mouse gene can take 6-9 months). Like, ages. Also, would you keep them in a zoo? They used to be part of a massive ecosystem, so unless you’re bringing everything back, I think they would potentially die out quickly. Also, they might be really susceptible to our diseases, e.g. flu, because they have never been exposed to it. So it’s not just whether it’s possible to do the initial engineering/cloning, it’s the survivability after that. And whether it’s ethical to resurrect a couple of members of a species for our viewing pleasure (potentially it isn’t #spoilers)

    • Photo: Damian Mole

      Damian Mole answered on 4 Jun 2018:

      With all the sensible caveats that Hannah has given, yes, it certainly would be possible. In fact, people are already making hybrid clones, where DNA from one species is hosted in the egg of another (that had its own nuclear DNA removed). Also, there are some science projects making completely artificial genomes from scratch, to try and find out what the minimum set of genes for life is.

    • Photo: Joey Shepherd

      Joey Shepherd answered on 4 Jun 2018:

      Hannah has answered this really well – theoretically yes, it would be possible, but would take years. And as Hannah says, how would you keep them once you’d made them? What would they eat? Would they die from catching a cold? And, apart from it being pretty cool to see a living dinosaur, why would you go to all of this trouble and expense? And lastly…. is it ethically sound (I suspect not!)?

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      After watching the previous films, even if they did i think i would probably avoid buying a ticket to visit 🙂

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