Why Can't You Clone Dinosaurs? - Alternative View

Why Can't You Clone Dinosaurs? - Alternative View
Why Can't You Clone Dinosaurs? - Alternative View

Video: Why Can't You Clone Dinosaurs? - Alternative View

Video: Why Can't You Clone Dinosaurs? - Alternative View
Video: Michio Kaku: Can We Resurrect the Dinosaurs? Neanderthal Man? | Big Think 2024, May
Anonim

This theme is very heavily used in cinematography, but no. First, we've already found out that dinosaur bones are not bones at all. And the second reason, for sure, many know, but still we will clarify …

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is what unites us with the flora and fauna of the entire planet. It is generally known, for example, that the DNA of a person and a banana is 50% similar (which, of course, does not make us half a banana), and the genome of each person differs from the genome of any other person by only 0.1%, which makes us unique.

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A group of scientists conducted a study of the DNA of an extinct moa bird, using bones found from 600 to 8,000 years old, and found that after 521 years the bonds in the DNA decay so much that the genetic code is already quite difficult to read.

After about 1.5 million years, fragments of these connections will become so short that they will be impossible to read, and the complete decay of DNA will take about 6.8 million years, that is, there is practically no hope of cloning dinosaurs that died out about 65 million years ago.

Scientists do not exclude that the half-life of DNA in the remains stored in permafrost conditions may be longer, but this is hardly enough for a real "Jurassic park" to appear on Earth. But the hope for cloning mammoths, the remains of which are found where it is always winter, is not yet completely lost: for example, on Wrangel Island, these giant animals lived “some” 4,000 years ago.