You've probably seen the famous science fiction film Jurassic Park directed by Steven Spielberg, which tells about a certain Misty Island, where an amusement park with cloned dinosaurs was created.
Amazingly, this fantastic film may well become reality in a few years, because the Australian billionaire decided to clone dinosaurs and create the same park where you can see the long-extinct dinosaurs.
The incredible idea of an Australian rich man
Australian coal tycoon billionaire Clive Palmer, world renowned for his plans to create a copy of the famous "Titanic", decided to surprise the inhabitants of the planet even more, deciding to clone extinct dinosaurs and create a very real Jurassic Park. This incredible undertaking of the rich man was reported last year by the English edition of The Daily Mail.
Palmer has already begun collaborating with scientists who once cloned the famous Dolly the sheep. Not far from the city of Brisbane (Queensland), the billionaire acquired a plot of land surrounded on all sides by water, it is on it, without any cages and aviaries in the natural environment, that he plans to keep cloned lizards. On the same site, Palmer is going to build hotels and a giant Ferris wheel from which tourists can observe the life of prehistoric reptiles.
However, another edition of The Brisbane Times, referring to its sources, reported that the billionaire is not going to resurrect dinosaurs. In the meantime, Palmer's Blue Star Line is building an absolute replica of the ill-fated Titanic at a shipyard in China. The ship is expected to make its maiden voyage from England to the United States at the end of 2016.
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Of course, journalists persistently remind Palmer about the rock of the Titanic, and he replies that the ship will undoubtedly sink if a hole is punched in it, but he is not going to do that. In addition, the rescue equipment on board will be upgraded and there will be enough rescue equipment for everyone if anything happens. And the Titanic-2 itself will be built taking into account all the latest technologies, so it will be much more difficult to drown it than its famous namesake. The billionaire assures that the likelihood of a shipwreck will be minimal.
It's impossible to clone dinosaurs ?
Leaving the resurgent Titanic alone, we wonder if Palmer is actually going to clone dinosaurs? Publications about this venture made a lot of noise and once again raised the question of whether there is at least any chance to do this? Alas, scientists answered this question in the negative.
As recently reported by the journal Nature, scientists have proven that cloning dinosaurs is impossible. This was done by a group of paleogeneticists led by Morten Allentoft of the University of Copenhagen and Michael Bunce of the University of Perth in Australia. Scientists studied the preservation of DNA in ancient bones, most of all they were interested in the preservation of genetic material for a very long time and the possibility of its extraction.
Scientists conducted their research and experiments with the bones of extinct moa birds. It is worth noting that these giant birds lived in New Zealand and became extinct due to extermination by local residents only about five hundred years ago. There are many remains of moa, so scientists used bones from 600 to 8 thousand years old for research. It was found that DNA decay in moa bones occurs very quickly, and the half-life is only 521 years.
After 1.5 million years, the genetic material is unusable for reading, and in about 6.8 million years, the DNA completely decays. So the real dinosaur cloning is complete fantasy. Biologist Simon Ho of the University of Sydney says: "This confirms a long-held suspicion that no DNA from dinosaurs and ancient insects trapped in amber actually exists."
Although the research will continue, scientists have already made the main conclusion - "Jurassic Park" will remain for many just an unrealizable dream. So, is the Australian billionaire's venture a waste of time and money, or was he not going to clone prehistoric monsters? It is possible that the rumors about an incredible project were just a good publicity stunt, for example, Palmer is actually going to open an amusement park on the purchased site, but instead of living monsters there will be life-size robotic models of lizards. However, all is not lost, as it turned out, there is another way to revive the extinct monsters!
Descendants of lizards on our table
Recently, Australian geneticists managed to clone an extinct species of frogs - rheobatrachus. These are very original frogs, the offspring of rheobatrachuses appears from the mouth of the female after she takes it out in her stomach. The frog cloning project was called Lazarus, after the biblical hero who was resurrected by Jesus Christ.
Scientists had rheobatrachus cells that had been stored frozen for over 40 years. These cells of genetics were transplanted into a frog egg of a related species - a large striped frog (Mixophyes fasciolatus). Professor Mike Archer, head of the project, told reporters: “We watched the resurrection of Lazarus step by step. By transplanting dead cells into a living organism, we have restored the genome of a long-extinct amphibian species. The result is live frozen cells that can be used for future cloning research.”
Although none of the cloned frogs survived for more than a few days, scientists, using genetic tests, established that they had indeed obtained an extinct animal. The success inspired the researchers, and now they are going to clone mammoths and dinosaurs. If the chances of mammoths are very high, then with dinosaurs, as we already know, it is almost hopeless.
However, in this case, there is a very curious option. Probably, many of you enjoy eating various chicken dishes, but this poultry, as scientists have established, is a descendant of a dinosaur and has its DNA. Suffice it to say that the chicken embryo has saber-toothed jaws and a large tail with scales! According to scientists, there is a chance to wake up the chicken's sleeping gene information and get a dinosaur as a result.
By the way, relatively recently, Mary Schweitzer, a specialist at the Carolina State University, made a sensational statement. She said that there was a very real chance to clone a dinosaur. She came to this conclusion after researching the unique remains of a tyrannosaur discovered a couple of years ago in the United States, when several organic materials were removed from a broken dinosaur bone. Scientists believe that these are fragments of blood vessels, as well as completely viable cells.
Now scientists are going to look for additional genetic material in other fossil remains of dinosaurs, the structure of the vessels of which is identical to the tyrannosaurus. True, even then a variant similar to the "chicken" one appeared, it turned out that the composition of the ostrich blood is similar to the blood of a dinosaur, so there is a chance to recreate the DNA of an extinct lizard. Well, there it is already close to a living dinosaur.
So if billionaire Clive Palmer actually conceived of creating his own "Jurassic Park", then there is still a chance to resurrect dinosaurs.