Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Dinochickens

There's a great interview in Wired this month with Jack Horner, a paleontologist who is working on tweaking chicken embryos to make dinosaurs. Horner was a consultant on Jurassic Park, and was apparently a partial inspiration for the character of Dr. Alan Grant.

Dinochickens. Seriously. Horner says that since birds are descendants of dinosaurs, they still carry their DNA.

"So in its early stages a chicken embryo will develop dinosaur traits, like a long tail, teeth, and three-fingered hands. If you can find the genes that cancel the tail and fuse the fingers to build a wing -- and turn those genes off -- you can grow animals with dinosaur characteristics."

Crazy. I wonder if they would look like these... the Titanis. A dinosaur bird that lived in Florida and Texas. They were up to 10 feet tall and weighed as much as 800 lbs.



Or... wait. Dinochickens. Maybe like this...

Dinochickens.

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