Not all dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. In fact, they鈥檙e still all around us. Birds are dinosaurs, and evidence for that toothy ancestry is growing.
In this week鈥檚 Exploradio, WKSU鈥檚 Jeff St.Clair explores local efforts to understand the dino/avian connection, and a plan to engineer a very early bird.
In the first movie, a flock of ostrich-like dinosaurs race past when suddenly a giant T-Rex leaps out and snags one.
Huddling behind a fallen tree, actor Sam Neill tells the terrified kids, 鈥淏et you never look at birds the same way again 鈥︹��
For him, both the Gallimimus and the T-Rex are just very big birds.
Neill鈥檚 character is based on real-life paleontologist , curator of Montana鈥檚 , who has served as the technical advisor for all the "Jurassic Park" movies, including "Jurassic World."
Horner was at recently to meet with some of his former students, and talk about : Turning a modern bird back into a dinosaur, sort of.
He says "Jurassic Park" was fictional because dinosaur DNA does not exist; it's just too fragile to survive millions of years.
"But then it dawned on me," says Horner, "that we have dinosaur DNA in birds.鈥�
Inside every chicken lies the dormant genes for teeth, claws and a tail that are one-by-one turned off as a little dino-embryo becomes a bird. Horner and his collaborators are trying to trick those genes into turning back on.
The result is chickenosaurus.
鈥淏asically it鈥檚 still a bird," says Horner, "just a bird with a long tail, and arms and hands instead of wings, and teeth. It鈥檚 still a bird, but a bird is still a dinosaur.鈥�
It could happen. Genes for have been found, and last year engineered a chicken embryo to have like an alligator instead of a typical bird beak.
It鈥檚 slow going, but that doesn鈥檛 bother Horner.
鈥淭his is about learning about science," he says, "and it鈥檚 about how evolution works and a lot of other things.鈥�
Meanwhile one of Horner鈥檚 former students is exploring birds鈥� dino origins from the skin in, rather than from the bones out.
Putting feathers on dinosaur bones
teaches human anatomy at NEOMED, but the bone he's holding up looks like it could have once been covered in barbecue sauce.
鈥淭his is a chicken finger," he tells me, the same bone as the lower part of my pointer finger. Each bird wing, he says, holds 10 primary feathers.
"That first finger bone," Hieronymus says, "that's where primary feathers eight and nine attach, on that little flange.鈥�
He explains the parallel between the chicken finger and its fearsome ancestor.
鈥淭here are bumps just like this on forelimbs as well,鈥� he says.
Many flightless dinosaurs like velociraptor had feathers, perhaps for insulation or display, and Hieronymus is painstakingly mapping bird skin, ligaments and muscles of modern birds to understand how those systems worked in their extinct dinosaur kin.
Molecular paleontology digs up old molecules
is another former student of Jack Horner.
She teaches molecular paleontology at North Carolina State University.
Schweitzer pretty much invented the field in the 1990鈥檚 when she dissolved a T-Rex bone from Montana'a to see what was inside it.
Horner had given her the bone to examine and she surprised him first by telling him that it was . That鈥檚 because the T-Rex bone had special structures that help it form eggshells, just like a chicken.
Her next discovery shocked Horner and the world.
鈥淭his work is very, very ," she says, describing how she let the T-Rex bone soak a little too long, until all the bone had dissolved. "And we went to pick it up out of the solution and it sort of stretched all over the place, not quite like a rubber band, but almost.鈥�
It was .
鈥淎nd that鈥檚 not really possible,鈥� she says.
Soft tissue survives millions of years
But Schweitzer discovered that the fibrous protein found in bones and skin of almost every animal, including humans, had survived intact for 65 million years.
She sequenced the collagen protein, tested it with avian antibodies among , and discovered it鈥檚 identical to the type found in birds.
Schweitzer has since found other seemingly impossible molecules including , the compound found in red blood cells, and, the major component of feathers.
But when it comes to creating a chickenosaurus, she鈥檚 not so sure.
鈥淚 think it would be pretty cool to see if we can resurrect some of these traits," But on the other hand says Schweitzer, "I grew up with chickens and the idea of gathering eggs from one with teeth is not pleasant.鈥�
And as for a real-life dino-park, she says that鈥檚 better left to Hollywood.
