Credit: John Conway
By Science Daily
Using the fossil record as a guide, a research team led by Yale paleontologist and developmental biologist Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar and Harvard developmental biologist Arhat Abzhanov conducted the first successful reversion of a bird’s skull features. The scientists replicated ancestral molecular development to transform chicken embryos in a laboratory into specimens with a snout and palate configuration similar to that of small dinosaurs such as Velociraptor and Archaeopteryx.
Just don’t call them dino-chickens.
“Our goal here was to understand the molecular underpinnings of an important evolutionary transition, not to create a ‘dino-chicken’ simply for the sake of it,” said Bhullar, lead author of the study, published online May 12 in the journal Evolution.
Finding the mechanism to recreate elements of dinosaur physiology has been a topic of popular interest for some time. It has been featured in everything from molecular biologist Jack Horner’s 2009 book, “How to Build a Dinosaur,” to the upcoming Hollywood movie “Jurassic World.”
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