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Posted: 23-02-2002 03:37 Post subject: Living Dinosaurs!

I don't mean the sightings in Africa.

Do you think it's possible that the Military Goverment, and Scientists have cloned dinosaurs as tests and experiments? I just watched CARNOSAUR 3: PRIMAL SPECIES. And that what happens in that movie.

Posted: 23-02-2002 04:17 Post subject:

I'm not sure. What I am sure of though is that the director of that movie should be fed to dinosaurs, assuming they ever are cloned. Very Happy

Joking aside, I think its very possible, if not probable, that the government is extremely interested in cloning. However, I don't think the object of their cloning would be resurecting long dead species. I think the current targets would be things such as vat grown tissue/muscles/organs, selective reproduction, etc. Although the thought of an anti-terrorist squad equipped with Utah raptors instead of german shepards is oddly appealing. :p

Posted: 23-02-2002 04:35 Post subject:

I agree with Bitter Monk, i think if the government was going to put so much money, effort and time into a cloning project they would have chose something different. Think about it what use would a bunch of dinosaurs be to anyone? What are they going to do? release them into Afghanistan and hope they take out BinLanden?
The only people who would clone dinosaurs are scientists that want to either research and cut up the dinosaurs or want to cage them up in a zoo and charge people for viewing the poor creatures.
Anyways i was under the impression that there hasnt been a good enough dinosaur DNA sample turned up that would even come close to producing a clone. They have got mammoth DNA tho but who cares about hairy elephants?

Posted: 23-02-2002 23:14 Post subject: cloning dinosaurs

If they do suceed you can put em in my back paddock,cant wait till the electricity reader tries to get in the gate.Didnt they get some DNA from amber,or was that only insects?

Posted: 24-02-2002 03:12 Post subject:

I'd say there wasn't even a slight chance. For one, it'd be equally as publically shocking and hundreds of times as easy to simply clone a mammoth. Not only do we have dozens of freeze-dried mammoth bodies complete with original cells and DNA (whereas we'd have to get dino DNA through some very weird means and usually not even know what kind of dinosaur we were cloning, if it was a dinosaur at all), all you'd have to do is fertilize a mammoth egg and implant it in a modern elephant, since the species aren't all that far apart. What kind of animal could we make dinosaur eggs in?

I figure once they get cloning down, the first extinct animal they'll clone is a mammoth. Are there any stuffed dodos, anywhere in the world? I'd do that one next.

Posted: 24-02-2002 04:27 Post subject:

Posted: 24-02-2002 15:49 Post subject:

hey guys- this is what i kinda know about. I want to do my PhD on phylogenetics of extinct species. Was down in oxford last week speaking to Dr. Alan Cooper. The guy who cloned the complete mitochondrial genome of the giant Moa. Very cool guy.
One of his Post grads is working right now on Dodo DNA and how it evolved from mere pigeons. Should be in this months Science
DerekH- the chambers st. museum one is a model, although the curator of the museum- Andrew Kitchener- is a bit of an expert on Dodos so its probably quite a good likeness.
There are NO stuffed Dodos anywhere in the world. the sum of our anatomical knowledge comes from bones from the Mare aux songes swamp in Mauritius. A head and foot (badly rotten- the Ashmolean museum had a stuffed dodo till about 1720 but under a statute saying that if it got mouldy it had to be replaced meant that it was sent to be burnt. A canny curator cut off the head and foot. Odf course by this time there was no Dodos left to replace the specimen with.) i think there is also a head in Copenhagen museum but that is it.
As for where cloning is heading next-
Some New Zealand boys school organised a smeinar and invited many experts to it. Their school emblem is the extinct Huia (theres a picture on barndad.freeservers.com under "recently extinct animals) and the agreement was to start work on the cloning of the Huia which only disappeared in 1907. Very interesting bird species and there are 2 pairs of stuffed Huias in the Chambers st museum (one in "The world in our hands" and one in the ornithology dept.)
Personally i would like to work on the Thylacine or great auk. There are spirit preserved remains of both which would make any DNA studies easier to do.
Cloning is a long way off though. DNA breaks up very easily and for cells to be viable you need to have contiguous sequences.

Posted: 27-02-2002 16:17 Post subject:

If you want to see the preserved head and foot. This is them here:
http://www.ulg.ac.be/museezoo/img29.htm
A skeleton is here:
http://www.senckenberg.uni-frankfurt.de/jpgs/vogel1.jpg
For size- A dodo was about the size of a large turkey.

Posted: 27-02-2002 19:39 Post subject:

What is the status of the proposed Australian project to clone the thylacine?

Posted: 28-02-2002 00:39 Post subject: Thylacine conspircay theories

They could just go out and catch a live one, according to some sources. Then they could present it to the world, as an example of Australia's superior genetic engineering skills.

Or maybe, they already have cloned thylacines, and they escaped, hence all the sightings. The Australian government is trying to cover it up, because, uh, the thylacines ran riot at an amusement park and ate a lot of tourists. Three times, no less, getting less exciting and more contrived each time.

Cool

Posted: 28-02-2002 17:31 Post subject:

Digging back now to my brief tenure as a Biology major....

Under current cloning methods, the only real way to clone any extinct creature would be to inject it's DNA into an "emptied" embryo of a related species. Then that species births the clone.

Now with Mammoths, the problem is articically inseminating a full-grown elephant. I don't know if this has been done, but we could probably pull it off (although insemination could take decades itself...Elephants reproduce SLOWLY....).

The Thylacine might be more problematic. I don't think any large, wolf-sized marsupial carnivores exist anymore. But it IS a marsupial. They have pretty simple reproduction. They give birth to tiny young who "gestate" in the pouch. Perhaps a smaller marsupial could birth the Thylacine and then the infant could be transferred to a larger "pouch mother". I dunno. The logistics are baffling to me.

Dodos could be tough. In THEORY all you need is the right type of egg and a decent incubator. Besides the full set of DNA (iffy now). But you'd have to find an appropriate donor egg. Perhaps the massive Crowned Pigeons would work? They seem to be related (Well, they are HUGE pigeons like the Dodo....). Then you just hand-feed the buggers until they can eat on their own.

My hope is for the Passenger Pigeon. Recently extinct, and plenty of relatives running around.

Posted: 28-02-2002 17:39 Post subject:

the problem with cloning is that you need the chromosomes to be intact. With DNA from extinct animals its invariably fragmented and if you microinject it into a donor it just wont work. The order and position of the genes in the genome are very important.
There are enzymes the can repair double strand breaks but then how do you know that the right bits have been rejoined?
I agree with schmell that passenger pigeons may eventually be easier to do than most. and would also say the same about the Great Auk - its almost exactly like a bigger brother of the razorbill.

Posted: 01-03-2002 17:36 Post subject:

Well Ah'l be.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020301/sc/science_britain_dodo_dc_1.html

Scientists at Oxford have put together the fragmented dodo DNA in the dodo parts in their natural history museum. It's not enough to clone a dodo, but it is enough to see what birds are most closely related to them.

Posted: 06-03-2002 11:18 Post subject:

Posted: 06-03-2002 21:52 Post subject:

Yeah, but who would sign up for that job?