What are our chances of reconstructing dinosaur DNA and using cloning techniques to bring them back to life?
It is extremely unlikely that enough dinosaur DNA could be recovered from fossils to create a viable dinosaur using cloning techniques. DNA is a very fragile molecule that starts breaking down soon after death. Scientists have recovered DNA and proteins from bones that have been preserved for hundreds of thousands of years in cold areas, but only small fragments of genes remain. Dinosaur fossils are thousands of times older, and cloning would require the complete genome, not to mention a suitable host egg. Comparing the genomes of living birds might give us a better insight into the DNA of their dinosaur ancestors, but would not directly allow us to reconstruct the genes that dinosaurs lost when they evolved into birds. In 2002, researchers reconstructed the eye pigment protein of an archosaur – a crocodile-like dinosaur ancestor that died out 240 million years ago – by examining and comparing the DNA of its modern relatives, including crocodiles, birds and fish.
