Could 2012 be the year of Chickenosaurus, the first dinosaur to live in modern times?
You might recall our story from a few years ago, describing what was then referred to as "Dinochicken." To recap, Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, told me that he and some colleagues were working to create a dinosaur out of a
chicken.
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The goal is to bring back multiple dinosaur characteristics, such as a tail, teeth and forearms, by changing the levels of regulatory proteins that have evolved to suppress these characteristics in modern birds.
"Birds are dinosaurs, so technically we're making a dinosaur out of a dinosaur," Horner explained to me. "The only reason we're using chickens, instead of some other bird, is that the chicken genome has been mapped, and chickens have already been exhaustively studied."
The timing of this announcement coincided with the release of Horner's book, "How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever" (Dutton Adult, 2009). He suggested to me then that he and some colleagues, such as Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal, were already moving forward with the project.
Laarson and his team are analyzing the genes involved in tail development and researching ways of manipulating chicken embryos in order to "awaken the dinosaur within."
So how far ahead are they with the project now? Horner isn't revealing, but he continues to share that he and his colleagues are actively working on the needed steps. I think he wants the result to be complete, and not just a chicken with a dino-like tail, for example.
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Horner told me that when Chickenosaurus is created, he looks forward to bringing it out on a leash during lectures.
"We're always looking for novel ways to get the general public interested in science," he said, "and you have to admit, it would be better than a slide show for demonstrating evolution."
This year, he gave a TED lecture on the subject... Comments
Robert A. Sloan
Science fiction idea. Horner succeeds in creating Chickenosaurus. Chickenosaurus breeds true, becomes popular as a pet because it's cute, smart, small and easy to take care of. Global Warming changes the Earth's ecology so drastically that humanity becomes extinct. Small animals like Chickenosaurus and other birds survive to radiate into all the empty large-animal ecological niches in a completely different, warmer Earth. Hundreds of millions of years later, sentient dinosaurs philosophize about the Age of Mammals and the tragic end of the Age of Mammals. We wind up in their story books and they produce "Walking with Humans" documentaries.
Everything that goes around, comes around...
Science fiction idea. Horner succeeds in creating Chickenosaurus. Chickenosaurus breeds true, becomes popular as a pet because it's cute, smart, small and easy to take care of. Global Warming changes the Earth's ecology so drastically that humanity becomes extinct. Small animals like Chickenosaurus and other birds survive to radiate into all the empty large-animal ecological niches in a completely different, warmer Earth. Hundreds of millions of years later, sentient dinosaurs philosophize about the Age of Mammals and the tragic end of the Age of Mammals. We wind up in their story books and they produce "Walking with Humans" documentaries.
Everything that goes around, comes around...
Ivan The Terrible
As a lighter side, I saw this with my grandchildren on a Scooby Doo cartoon. If i remember the larger bird was to feed more people.
As a lighter side, I saw this with my grandchildren on a Scooby Doo cartoon. If i remember the larger bird was to feed more people.
Daniel
I support this research, but it may have problems ...
Even if the dino-chicken were to hatch and fully mature, it might still behave as a chicken :
1. It may unsuccessfully attempt to crack corn and other seeds with its new teeth instead of a proper beak ...
2. It may continue to scratch at the ground for food while its new feathered arms flail uselessly in the air ...
3. It may compensate for its longer tail by leaning its head forward in a more aggressive stance ... or it may simply tip over backwards ...
The end result of such superficial genetic modification may not be very pretty ...
Much depends upon the plasticity of the chicken brain and body to deal with these modifications .
To create a fully functional dinosaur would require more extensive, on - going breeding and genetic modification program than Dr. Horner suggests within this video .
I support this research, but it may have problems ...
Even if the dino-chicken were to hatch and fully mature, it might still behave as a chicken :
1. It may unsuccessfully attempt to crack corn and other seeds with its new teeth instead of a proper beak ...
2. It may continue to scratch at the ground for food while its new feathered arms flail uselessly in the air ...
3. It may compensate for its longer tail by leaning its head forward in a more aggressive stance ... or it may simply tip over backwards ...
The end result of such superficial genetic modification may not be very pretty ...
Much depends upon the plasticity of the chicken brain and body to deal with these modifications .
To create a fully functional dinosaur would require more extensive, on - going breeding and genetic modification program than Dr. Horner suggests within this video .
Robert A. Sloan
Good point about instinctive behavior versus learned behavior. This is another aspect of the research itself, because the chickenosaurus actually is a deformed, disabled member of its species. I'm a disabled human with birth defects.
It took me longer to learn to walk than other children, but I learned to walk. I can't eat about half the foods most people do, but I learned to avoid those foods and eat only the ones I thrive on. Birds are very intelligent. How much the Chickenosaurus reverts to instinctive behaviors versus how much it adapts its actual behavior to what works (still motivated by its instincts) is going to be interesting. I hope Jack Horner includes that when he writes it up or does an article on it.
Having feathered arms folded up while scratching at the ground with its hind feet would be as irrelevant as having wings folded up while scratching the ground with its hind feet. It might learn to bite rather than peck though, since it's got teeth, or it might bludgeon worms with its nose before biting. It might learn that bending over to scratch with its arms is more effective if what it wants would be turned up better by a manual grab.
Falling over backwards on its tail would be a learning to walk stage, eventually compensated for by finding its balance. I think the instinct to learn to walk is the desire to walk and that walking is a learned behavior - the fact that it took me longer and I can walk tells me that.
It will probably give up on cracking corn and other seeds if its teeth can't manage it and specialize in grabbing softer prey like grubs or eating pre-cracked corn. It's not going to starve because Horner's taking care of it. I don't eat foods that have pepper in them, no matter how much social pressure I get from friends who love eating spicy food, because they hurt and frustrate me. Enough tries at corn-cracking and the chickenosaurus wouldn't bother.
It's going to be a good study on instinct and adaptive behavior. Instinct tells chickenosaurus "Look for small edibles on the ground - seeds, bugs, worms, bits of carrion or fruit leftovers, both plant and animal material is food unless it smells so rotten only a vulture would want it." Some seeds are too hard to crack for chickens with normal beaks. I'm sure they ignore Brazil nuts and acorns unless they've already been run over by a car. However, crows have learned that if they drop nuts in a crosswalk, cars will run over them to break them and then stop for a set period of time so the crow can eat the nutmeat.
So all of the behavior problems you've described are obstacles Chickenosaurus will be solving individually on personal experience. Life wants to thrive. Deformed and disabled organisms that can't perform their instinctive behaviors in the same ways as others of their species find ways to do so and give up on what's impossible.
What's just as interesting will be to find out if deactivating the repression genes opens the entire package, including a set of slap-and-grab instincts for "How to use your hands." Will Chickenosaurus have an urge to use them because it has hands? How fast will it learn to grasp things? It'll know to spread its arms for balance while running because chickens spread their wings for balance while running. Are instinct packages associated with the genes for their traits?
If Chickenosaurus starts inventing behaviors that chickens do not have, if its mating strut is categorically different from that of a rooster, there's evidence for "instinct packages go with the limb." Perhaps that at some level, if an organism is successful in life and differs so much from its species that it isn't attractive, it seeks others that resemble it and performs different mating displays. Birds have speciated over and over again. How do the different mating calls and dances of Darwin's finches develop?
Chickenosaurus is both evidence of dinosaur evolution, genetic understanding of avian-dinosaur lineage and a study in species creation. I hope Jack Horner makes more than one of them. I don't think they'd out-compete actual wild chicken species, but as a domestic animal it already has an ecological niche. Symbiosis with us as either a prey species or a pet species or both (chickens are both) would ensure its survival as a new animal, not a breed of chicken.
Good point about instinctive behavior versus learned behavior. This is another aspect of the research itself, because the chickenosaurus actually is a deformed, disabled member of its species. I'm a disabled human with birth defects.
It took me longer to learn to walk than other children, but I learned to walk. I can't eat about half the foods most people do, but I learned to avoid those foods and eat only the ones I thrive on. Birds are very intelligent. How much the Chickenosaurus reverts to instinctive behaviors versus how much it adapts its actual behavior to what works (still motivated by its instincts) is going to be interesting. I hope Jack Horner includes that when he writes it up or does an article on it.
Having feathered arms folded up while scratching at the ground with its hind feet would be as irrelevant as having wings folded up while scratching the ground with its hind feet. It might learn to bite rather than peck though, since it's got teeth, or it might bludgeon worms with its nose before biting. It might learn that bending over to scratch with its arms is more effective if what it wants would be turned up better by a manual grab.
Falling over backwards on its tail would be a learning to walk stage, eventually compensated for by finding its balance. I think the instinct to learn to walk is the desire to walk and that walking is a learned behavior - the fact that it took me longer and I can walk tells me that.
It will probably give up on cracking corn and other seeds if its teeth can't manage it and specialize in grabbing softer prey like grubs or eating pre-cracked corn. It's not going to starve because Horner's taking care of it. I don't eat foods that have pepper in them, no matter how much social pressure I get from friends who love eating spicy food, because they hurt and frustrate me. Enough tries at corn-cracking and the chickenosaurus wouldn't bother.
It's going to be a good study on instinct and adaptive behavior. Instinct tells chickenosaurus "Look for small edibles on the ground - seeds, bugs, worms, bits of carrion or fruit leftovers, both plant and animal material is food unless it smells so rotten only a vulture would want it." Some seeds are too hard to crack for chickens with normal beaks. I'm sure they ignore Brazil nuts and acorns unless they've already been run over by a car. However, crows have learned that if they drop nuts in a crosswalk, cars will run over them to break them and then stop for a set period of time so the crow can eat the nutmeat.
So all of the behavior problems you've described are obstacles Chickenosaurus will be solving individually on personal experience. Life wants to thrive. Deformed and disabled organisms that can't perform their instinctive behaviors in the same ways as others of their species find ways to do so and give up on what's impossible.
What's just as interesting will be to find out if deactivating the repression genes opens the entire package, including a set of slap-and-grab instincts for "How to use your hands." Will Chickenosaurus have an urge to use them because it has hands? How fast will it learn to grasp things? It'll know to spread its arms for balance while running because chickens spread their wings for balance while running. Are instinct packages associated with the genes for their traits?
If Chickenosaurus starts inventing behaviors that chickens do not have, if its mating strut is categorically different from that of a rooster, there's evidence for "instinct packages go with the limb." Perhaps that at some level, if an organism is successful in life and differs so much from its species that it isn't attractive, it seeks others that resemble it and performs different mating displays. Birds have speciated over and over again. How do the different mating calls and dances of Darwin's finches develop?
Chickenosaurus is both evidence of dinosaur evolution, genetic understanding of avian-dinosaur lineage and a study in species creation. I hope Jack Horner makes more than one of them. I don't think they'd out-compete actual wild chicken species, but as a domestic animal it already has an ecological niche. Symbiosis with us as either a prey species or a pet species or both (chickens are both) would ensure its survival as a new animal, not a breed of chicken.
Daniel
The first time I heard about this line of research, Dr. Horner was suggesting an emu as his bird of choice ...
Although a case can be made that the emu shares more behavioral characteristics with a small dinosaur than a chicken ... advances in chicken dna analysis make the choice of chicken over the emu obvious at this time .
Either way, this requires a much larger and in-depth program than Dr. Horner suggests here ...
Not just to acquire the basic research necessary for successful embryo modification, but also to study the role of instinct in the new animal's behavior and development .
Constraints placed by physical adaptation would also logically limit the animal's behavioral and developmental abilities ... requiring further study and analysis .
As such, a multi-generational breeding program may become a necessary part of this research ...
In any case, I do not expect this line of research to exhibit these successes in the near future ...
The solutions to these problems seem well beyond microbiology and genetic engineering with respect to morphological development in mammals and birds at the present time .
The first time I heard about this line of research, Dr. Horner was suggesting an emu as his bird of choice ...
Although a case can be made that the emu shares more behavioral characteristics with a small dinosaur than a chicken ... advances in chicken dna analysis make the choice of chicken over the emu obvious at this time .
Either way, this requires a much larger and in-depth program than Dr. Horner suggests here ...
Not just to acquire the basic research necessary for successful embryo modification, but also to study the role of instinct in the new animal's behavior and development .
Constraints placed by physical adaptation would also logically limit the animal's behavioral and developmental abilities ... requiring further study and analysis .
As such, a multi-generational breeding program may become a necessary part of this research ...
In any case, I do not expect this line of research to exhibit these successes in the near future ...
The solutions to these problems seem well beyond microbiology and genetic engineering with respect to morphological development in mammals and birds at the present time .
Patrik D'haeseleer
Not that it couldn't be done, mind you. But it would likely take a couple of years of hatching horribly mutated chickens to die a certain death. There's no way any review board would sign off on such an unethical series of experiments. There's a reason Larsson is only working on chicken *embryos*, you know...
And even if you found an unscrupulous commercial business partner (preferably with tropical island), there's still no way that you'd hatch a dinosaur - "not just a chicken with a dino-like tail" - within the year. There's just too much basic research still to be done.
Not that it couldn't be done, mind you. But it would likely take a couple of years of hatching horribly mutated chickens to die a certain death. There's no way any review board would sign off on such an unethical series of experiments. There's a reason Larsson is only working on chicken *embryos*, you know...
And even if you found an unscrupulous commercial business partner (preferably with tropical island), there's still no way that you'd hatch a dinosaur - "not just a chicken with a dino-like tail" - within the year. There's just too much basic research still to be done.
Patrik D'haeseleer
As always, whenever a news article has a question in the title, the answer is NO.
Thanks for not disappointing in at least that aspect...
As always, whenever a news article has a question in the title, the answer is NO.
Thanks for not disappointing in at least that aspect...
Dryunya
Randall Munroe is going to have a heart attack.
Randall Munroe is going to have a heart attack.
Shawnaldo
I vote for the name VelociRoosters.
I vote for the name VelociRoosters.
Charles Frederico Jr
The clear answer is... NO!! Dinosaurs NEVER evolved in to any thing!! There is NO substantial fossil evidence, bird anatomy and dinosaur anotomy are completely different, and bird fossils are found with so-called "avian" dinosaurs. I would say that NO dinosaurs had feathers including velociraptor. What I want to know is why we think lizard hipped dinosaurs like velociraptor and tyrannosaurus rex evolded into birds while the bird hipped dinosaurs are hadrosaurs and ceratopsians? Please give up, dinosaurs are not related to birds!
The clear answer is... NO!! Dinosaurs NEVER evolved in to any thing!! There is NO substantial fossil evidence, bird anatomy and dinosaur anotomy are completely different, and bird fossils are found with so-called "avian" dinosaurs. I would say that NO dinosaurs had feathers including velociraptor. What I want to know is why we think lizard hipped dinosaurs like velociraptor and tyrannosaurus rex evolded into birds while the bird hipped dinosaurs are hadrosaurs and ceratopsians? Please give up, dinosaurs are not related to birds!
Fixer Dave
And... if a bunch of scientists actually manage to suppress a few chicken genes during embryonic development and something suspiciously like a dinosaur hatches out, will you come back here to apologize?
When I read this I was thinking "why bother?" Then I read your comment. Now I know why they want to bother... WAY too many people like you. That's the funny thing about working science... you get clear answers through experimentation, not double exclamation points.
And... if a bunch of scientists actually manage to suppress a few chicken genes during embryonic development and something suspiciously like a dinosaur hatches out, will you come back here to apologize?
When I read this I was thinking "why bother?" Then I read your comment. Now I know why they want to bother... WAY too many people like you. That's the funny thing about working science... you get clear answers through experimentation, not double exclamation points.
Kevin Lew
here you go. got about a thousand other articles about dinosaur and avian evolution if this interests you.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070920145402.htm
here you go. got about a thousand other articles about dinosaur and avian evolution if this interests you.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070920145402.htm
Robert A. Sloan
Why would I take your unsupported view that your interpretation of your scripture is literally true and ignore the Vedas, the Buddhist scriptures, all other scriptures and all other wisdom from the ancients as completely invalid? Faith isn't science. Science is experimentation and testing reality.
Stories that guide the human heart and create culture and morality don't need to be literal to be valuable. I am not saying your scripture is wrong. I'm saying that it's not science and that I respect all scriptures equally as scripture. I could hold this view and be Christian, Jewish or Moslem, hold the idea of monotheism on faith and your personal opinion about evolution would still only be...
Your personal opinion about evolution, which is a science topic, a testable scientific observation.
Why would I take your unsupported view that your interpretation of your scripture is literally true and ignore the Vedas, the Buddhist scriptures, all other scriptures and all other wisdom from the ancients as completely invalid? Faith isn't science. Science is experimentation and testing reality.
Stories that guide the human heart and create culture and morality don't need to be literal to be valuable. I am not saying your scripture is wrong. I'm saying that it's not science and that I respect all scriptures equally as scripture. I could hold this view and be Christian, Jewish or Moslem, hold the idea of monotheism on faith and your personal opinion about evolution would still only be...
Your personal opinion about evolution, which is a science topic, a testable scientific observation.
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