• Question: If you were to use the DNA collected from an ancient dinosaur bone will you be able to somehow bring it back to life? To me it seems possible but I'm no scientist so I cant be certain :)

    Asked by anon-200794 to David on 6 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: David Walker-Sünderhauf

      David Walker-Sünderhauf answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      I’m afraid Jurassic Park is just fiction, I don’t think this would be possible 🙁 DNA just doesn’t last millions of years. A huge problem is that DNA degrades with time, so even if you were to (by a miracle) find traces of dinosaur DNA, be sure that these aren’t a contamination, you still wouldn’t have the whole genome – just a few fragments of DNA, not even enough to make up a single gene.

      (you can read more on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA )

      As to bringing back species that are more recently extinct, of which we might be able to get a complete DNA sample, this still wouldn’t be super straightforward. Generally, with a few advances, this could probably be done, but is more complicated than for example cloning of a sheep as you wouldn’t have an animal of the same species to implant an embryo into.

      (you can read more on that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-extinction )

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