How it worked & Could it be

done?

- By Jay Glaus
 Jurassic Park --- The Story
Jurassic Park was an island off of Costa
Rica where dinosaur DNA was used to
create an egg. The egg was then
incubated and it hatched. The result was a
dinosaur. The
dinosaur was then
raised, and showed
off to the public. But
could that really
happen?
Fences
 Step #1…

• Amber – Hardened/fossilized Tree

Sap
• Mosquito bites dinosaur
• Lands in wet tree sap and gets
stuck
• Wet tree sap hardens/fossilizes into
amber.
 Step #2…

• Drill into amber and into mosquito

• Amber
• If there is blood in mosquito, extract it.
Drilling Amber
 Some Trouble
• Scientists have extracted DNA from an
extinct Weevil from about 120 – 135
million years ago.
• Only a fragment of DNA, and not blood.
Need
• Less than one millionth of entire 100.000000
sequence. (less than 0.000001) To breed a true dino
• Entire sequence consists of billions of
individual base pairs.
• Stomach of mosquito deteriorates DNA
 More Trouble…
• It will be difficult to tell if it is
Dinosaur DNA.
• Scientists can only determine
what kind of DNA they have
by comparing and
contrasting DNA that they
have seen (current living).
• Nobody has ever seen
Dinosaur DNA.
 What Jurassic Park Did…
• Jurassic park put sections of Not a true dino

frog DNA into missing strands

• They made all dinosaurs
female so there would be no
risk of breeding.
• Breed of frogs they used
could change sex.
• Dinosaurs bred and became
overpopulated.
 We Cannot Do That!
• We cannot just “fill in” gaps with frog DNA.
• Instead of Jurassic Park’s Dinosaurs that were almost all
Dinosaur, and a minute part frog, we would have almost
all frog, and a minute part Dinosaur.
• Best thing Jurassic Park could have blended with
Dinosaur DNA wouldn’t be frogs, but birds.
• Birds have many similar features to Dinosaurs.
• We must find 100% of DNA to breed a Dinosaur.
• Take time and money, but it is not impossible.
• Millions of mosquitoes and fossils
• Take years.
 Step #3… Now it gets hard…
• DNA Usually linked to software because it
contains the information on how to use the DNA
to create an animal (egg).
• Program would act as “Mother Dinosaur” to
create the egg with the DNA properly inside.
• Since we have never seen Dinosaur DNA, none
of our programs available would know how to
use the DNA to breed a Dinosaur.
 21 Century…
st

• With the expanding technological

advances of the 21st century, we may be
able to find a way to get by the DNA
software issue.
• Once past that, (Assuming the eggs are
good) it would get easier.
• Hatch eggs in incubator (plenty of
experience)
Jurassic Park Hatchery
 Raising Our Dinosaur

• It is possible
• Scientists would have to figure out what to
feed them, since some of the plants that
existed long ago are extinct, and some
plants could be poisonous to Dinosaurs.
• How do we keep Dinosaurs healthy, how
do our modern germs effect Dinosaurs?
Raising Our Dinosaurs
• Our experience with raising
other animals will help
• California Condors were raised in captivity
(from eggs) using puppets so they
wouldn’t get too comfortable with humans.
• Tricky to create an 80-foot puppet to raise
Dinosaurs
 Set-Backs In Jurassic Park
• Electric Fences were turned off.
• Dinosaurs escaped
• Dinosaurs bred (able to change sex)
• Many things in park were destroyed.
 Set-backs
• Dinosaur DNA would be very difficult to correctly
sequence without a complete, intact DNA strand for
comparison.
• Any gaps in the resulting DNA sequence must be filled
with dinosaur DNA; using frog DNA as the story
suggests would likely produce an organism that varied
from the original animal.
• In order to clone a complete DNA sequence, an oocyte
(a female gametocyte or germ cell involved in
reproduction) from the same organism is required. Since
no dinosaurs are alive today, this would be impossible.
(Don’t forget about our expanding technology though!)
• A dinosaur embryo would not be able to develop
correctly without an egg from its own species.
 DNA From Bones
• Scott Woodward, of Brigham Young
University reported finding DNA in
fossilized bones.
• However, most
fossilized bones
do not contain
much if any DNA.
 New T-Rex Found With Soft
Tissue!
Paleontologists have recovered what appear to be
soft tissues from the thighbone of a 70 million-
year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, potentially enabling
dinosaur research to make a leap into studying
the animals' physiology and perhaps even their
cell biology, the research team said. Working
with the remains of a T. rex unearthed in
northeastern Montana. the paleontologists spied
the soft tissue when they were forced to break
the thighbone into pieces to fit it aboard a
helicopter.
 New T-Rex Found With Soft
Tissue!
Once in the lab, the team systematically removed
mineralized deposits from the bone, exposing blood
vessels, bone cells and possibly intact blood cells with
their nuclei. "The tissues are still soft, transparent and
flexible, and we can manipulate the vessels with our
probe," said team leader Mary H. Schweitzer of North
Carolina State University. "It's a tremendous thing," Ohio
University paleontologist Lawrence M. Witmer said. "It's
the first time for anything this old, and if we can start
getting the biomolecules of these animals, that will take
us to a place we have never been."
Schweitzer said the team is conducting further chemical
analysis to determine whether individual proteins could
be isolated from the specimen. She said she did not
know whether it would be possible to recover DNA from
the thighbone.
 Read The Whole Article…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
Are Dinosaurs Really Extinct

Bird
 Similarities
• Pubis (one of the three bones making up the vertebrate pelvis) shifted from an anterior to a more
posterior orientation (see Saurischia), and bearing a small distal "boot".
• Elongated arms and forelimbs and clawed manus (hands).
• Large orbits (eye openings in the skull).
• Flexible wrist with a semi-lunate carpal (wrist bone).
• Hollow, thin-walled bones.
• 3-fingered opposable grasping manus (hand), 4-toed pes (foot); but supported by 3 main toes.
• Reduced, posteriorly stiffened tail.
• Elongated metatarsals (bones of the feet between the ankle and toes).
• S-shaped curved neck.
• Erect, digitgrade (ankle held well off the ground) stance with feet positioned directly below the
body.
• Similar eggshell microstructure.
• Teeth with a constriction between the root and the crown.
• Functional basis for wing power stroke present in arms and pectoral girdle (during motion, the
arms were swung down and forward, then up and backwards, describing a "figure-eight" when
viewed laterally).
• Expanded pneumatic sinuses in the skull.
• Five or more vertebrae incorporated into the sacrum (hip).
• Straplike scapula (shoulder blade).
• Clavicles (collarbone) fused to form a furcula (wishbone).
• Hinge-like ankle joint, with movement mostly restricted to the fore-aft plane.
• Secondary bony palate (nostrils open posteriorly in throat).
• Possibly feathers... this awaits more study. Small, possibly feathered dinosaurs were recently
found in China. It appears that many coelurosaurs were cloaked in an external fibrous covering
that could be called "protofeathers."
Are Dinosaurs Really Extinct
For More Exciting Information…
Watch Jurassic Park, The lost World:
Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park 2), and
Jurassic Park III (Word of Jurassic Park 4
coming in 2008)
Even though there is some fiction in the
movies, there are interesting and true
facts stated!
Jurassic Park Could Have Worked
If…
• More than one person fully understood
computer system (Dennis Nedry).
• System wouldn’t have needed to be shut
down and power wouldn’t have gone out.
• Where were ranger helicopters with
tranquilizers?
• Acquired 100% DNA before attempting it.
• At least used bird DNA instead of frog (no
sex change = no breeding)
 The Final Verdict…

Could Jurassic Park be made?

Yes, it is possible,
maybe in the future
I hope you enjoyed this!