James Horner, who not only served as a technical advisor to the jurassic park films, but was also the inspiration for the character Dr. Alan Grant, believes that bringing dinosaurs back from extinction may potentially be a possibility within the next decade.
Contrary to the original movie however, where the DNA samples were extracted from mosquitoes trapped in amber, he does not believe this is a possible solution as the DNA material will break down over such a long period of time, no matter how well preserved.
He suggests that birds are the key to bringing the dinos back. Last month, scientists were able to genetically regress a chickens’ beak back to a dino-like snout by altering its gene proteins.
“We can get teeth into a bird and just recently a team from Yale and Harvard have managed to retro-engineer [a bird’s] beak back into a dinosaur-looking mouth,” said Horner. “So we basically have the tail to reinstate, and to transform the wings back into an arm and hand.” “We might find a couple of these genes tomorrow or it might take 10 years,” said Horner. “There’s just no way to predict.”
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