A question about chickenosaurus

[Daniel Fischer]

Hello, I think some of you heard about Jack Horner's chickenosaurus project (making a chicken look like its theropod ancestors) and I just wanted to hear your opinions about this project. DO you think its moral? Does it have any point? Will it be useful? And just generally your opinion about it.

I think he is just too much in to this project and it does not have much point but I am no expert.

I really want to hear any opinion or thought.

[LabRatKing]

This was done a few times in China a while back. Teeth, beak less snouts, scales instead of feathers. 

 

Ethically, as scientists, we do not bring such critters to term.

 

In the US, it is outright illegal to do such experimentation if brought to term.

 

These days genetic modification is severely limited, and for most labs cost prohibitive to do modifications on anything but bacteria.

 

At my labs for instance, we have the equipment and facilities for such work, but are prohibited from modifying  higher vertebrates at this time. We’ve done fluorescent protein mods on xenopus, axolotl, and a number of plants...but I have numerous chemically genemodded critter embryos in ethanol and cold storage, none brought to term.

 

Horner has the rep and access, but there is no way such work could be done in the US.

 

edit: did some research on this and in fact the critters cannot be brought to term under current regulations and laws in the US

[Fossildude19]

Just because something CAN be done, doesn't mean it SHOULD be done. 

[Thomas.Dodson]

38 minutes ago, LabRatKing said:

edit: did some research on this and in fact the critters cannot be brought to term under current regulations and laws in the US

Despite this the fundraiser for the project is still up and running. I don't know where to start on that.

 

I don't know why it seems like such a popular idea. Ethics and personal feelings aside, I don't see much benefit to it. Some comments on the fundraiser page I read suggest some far out, exaggerated claims of the scientific "benefits" this project would supposedly bring.

[Troodon]

Project is going nowhere, funding has only received 3% of goal.  We have birds good enough for me and dinosaur bones I play with don't bite 

 

 

[Thomas.Dodson]

1 minute ago, Troodon said:

Project is going nowhere, funding has only received 3% of goal.  

 

I was just thinking the same. Thankfully most people appear to have common sense or at least a fear of Jurassic Park!

[LabRatKing]

24 minutes ago, Thomas.Dodson said:

Despite this the fundraiser for the project is still up and running. I don't know where to start on that.

 

I don't know why it seems like such a popular idea. Ethics and personal feelings aside, I don't see much benefit to it. Some comments on the fundraiser page I read suggest some far out, exaggerated claims of the scientific "benefits" this project would supposedly bring.

I often ponder this. I literally have the ability to do this sort of work on hand, and the equipment, facilities  and funding to do it on just about anything but humans. These days the techniques aren’t fringe science, just shunned.

 

knockouts, CRISPr/CAS-9, electroporification, gene guns, etc is super cheap and easy these days...we have undergrads in molecular bio and biochem that use all sorts of genetic manipulation as part of their student labs! Heck, I built our gene gun out of a paintball gun and stuff from the Ace hardware across the street.

 

well that, and once the experiment is done I have zero qualms about having a Cluckosaur BBQ.

 

I think the real issue is far too many people take science FICTION far too seriously...and I blame all my favorite sci-fi writers for it.

[Ludwigia]

This is the first I've heard of this project, but now that I've caught up on the latest news about it, my opinion is that this just seems to be something that would be pretty useless. Even if it's successful in the end, after having destroyed or mangled potential or existing life along the way in a series of experiments, it has no real benefit that I can see other than to satisfy the curiosity of a few sensation seekers. The few potential medical benefits that are mentioned could certainly be arrived at over better routes than this one

[LabRatKing]

9 minutes ago, Ludwigia said:

This is the first I've heard of this project, but now that I've caught up on the latest news about it, my opinion is that this just seems to be something that would be pretty useless. Even if it's successful in the end, after having destroyed or mangled potential or existing life along the way in a series of experiments, it has no real benefit that I can see other than to satisfy the curiosity of a few sensation seekers. The few potential medical benefits that are mentioned could certainly be arrived at over better routes than this one

Horner is a showman for sure. I’d have a beer fueled contest over who has better hair and adventure hats, but I’m in the Jurassic Park is a steaming load of bovine feces and did more damage to science than good camp.

 

Now Jim Jensen...there’s a paleohero.

[Ludwigia]

3 minutes ago, LabRatKing said:

Horner is a showman for sure. I’d have a beer fueled contest over who has better hair and adventure hats, but I’m in the Jurassic Park is a steaming load of bovine feces and did more damage to science than good camp.

You said it. And guess who has funded most of the project so far? George Lucas.

[LabRatKing]

23 minutes ago, Ludwigia said:

You said it. And guess who has funded most of the project so far? George Lucas.

Yeah, but Chrichton is the real villain...but that is a topic for a different thread...

 

More on topic- just spoke with my boss...and he is totally down to authorize some of our private research funds to research the ammonites in a flow tank. So all we need is folks willing to supply casts of their specimens. We’ve got the facilities, budget and equipment...and he says my skill set is perfect for this kind of thing...just need the collaborators with appropriate background.

 

Who’s in?

 

We like working with pros just as much as citizen scientists and fellow avocationals!

 

[LabRatKing]

24 minutes ago, Ludwigia said:

You said it. And guess who has funded most of the project so far? George Lucas.

Also, I’ve got better hair and beard than him too...

[Thecosmilia Trichitoma]

I don’t really have anything morally against it, but I’m in the WHY? camp. It isn’t giving much new information to science, as all the science to make it happen exists, and the project is just putting it together. But there are a lot better ways to spend that money for research. I don’t really see why it would be useful or give new knowledge.

[Thecosmilia Trichitoma]

1 hour ago, Ludwigia said:

You said it. And guess who has funded most of the project so far? George Lucas

He probably just wants it as a prop in the next 10 jurassic park movies.

[FossilNerd]

This topic reminds me of the 4th movie from the Alien Franchise. Aptly named Alien Resurrection. Specifically the scene when Ripley 8 walks through the cloning lab and sees the other failed experiments. The malformed and mangled clones of herself.
 

I see many chickens harmed in the making of this dinosaur. 

[Praefectus]

I suspect that a lot of the genetic engineering research done for treating cancer could easily be applied towards trying to change chickens into dinosaurs. I'm not so sure why they want to start with dinosaurs, though. It would be much easier to resurrect creatures that we have organic tissue from, like the woolly mammoth or the dodo bird. 

[Misha]

I am ethically opposed to the project, I do not see it being beneficial in any way but it will definitely be harmful to the beings that are created as a result of it.

[Randyw]

[Daniel Fischer]

A lot of you said you do not see how can it be useful and I agree that it will not be but I just wanted to point out that Jack Horner says it will be helpful to teach people about dinosaurs. 

[Ludwigia]

10 hours ago, LabRatKing said:

 

 

More on topic- just spoke with my boss...and he is totally down to authorize some of our private research funds to research the ammonites in a flow tank. So all we need is folks willing to supply casts of their specimens. We’ve got the facilities, budget and equipment...and he says my skill set is perfect for this kind of thing...just need the collaborators with appropriate background.

 

Who’s in?

 

We like working with pros just as much as citizen scientists and fellow avocationals!

 

Sounds like a worthy project. I would suggest you check out Christian Klug's (Uni Zürich) papers on buoyancy of ammonites and related subjects. He's been delving into this along with some other researchers over the past few years. You'd have to consider the estimated weight of the casts for the various species and they would have to be made from excellent specimens which have preserved the true outer structure, but I'm sure you're already thinking about that. If I was living over there, I'd probably be able to help you out with casts, but this overseas stuff is too much for me. Maybe you should start a new thread with your idea since this here will probably go under within a few days.

[Kane]

6 hours ago, Daniel Fischer said:

A lot of you said you do not see how can it be useful and I agree that it will not be but I just wanted to point out that Jack Horner says it will be helpful to teach people about dinosaurs. 

I think Jack Horner is then just trying to rationalize the project when there are numerous (and much more sound, ethical) ways to teach people about dinosaurs. Examining fossil remains, books, courses in vertebrate paleontology, museum exhibits, etc., are all far more robust means to learn about dinosaurs than seeing a mutated chicken!  

[LabRatKing]

3 hours ago, Ludwigia said:

Sounds like a worthy project. I would suggest you check out Christian Klug's (Uni Zürich) papers on buoyancy of ammonites and related subjects. He's been delving into this along with some other researchers over the past few years. You'd have to consider the estimated weight of the casts for the various species and they would have to be made from excellent specimens which have preserved the true outer structure, but I'm sure you're already thinking about that. If I was living over there, I'd probably be able to help you out with casts, but this overseas stuff is too much for me. Maybe you should start a new thread with your idea since this here will probably go under within a few days.

I’ll check that out today...I was thinking along the lines of hollow resin casts with variable ballast to achieve neutral buoyancy. I suppose too I could just sculpt models to work from 

 

the fun wild card would be differing levels of salinity since as far as I know the oceans that existed over the eons had such

[FossilNerd]

Putting ethics and morals aside, I still do not see any scientific value to bringing back a long extinct species like dinosaurs, or even large hairy ice age fauna.

 

Would the end result of such experiments even be a dinosaur, or would it be a mutated chicken made to resemble one person’s (or small group’s) vision of how a dinosaur would look, act, be? Sure we know certain things that could be genetically forced upon such a creature based upon study of fossils, such as physics attributes, but the end result is still going to just be something that resembles a dinosaur and not the real thing. It wouldn’t have the same behaviors, mannerisms, instincts, etc. Much of that comes from the environment in which an animal lives and evolves in, and our environment is vastly different than it was 250 million years ago. 
 

So if this did come to fruition what would we learn about dinosaurs? What we think they looked like? We have models, pictures, and diagrams for that. How they act, think, behave? There is no way to accurately know. We find an adult female dino fossilized next to a nest and assume they were good mothers, but what if they are not, and momma (or random female) just happened to be walking by when a mudslide covered them over? What if the dino we think was an aggressive hunter was actually strictly a scavenger and shy around other dinosaurs?

 

Riddle me this...Did Iguanodon use their thumb spikes for defense, to dig, to crack nuts, or was it how they communicated?Maybe they just gave their buddies a thumbs up when they did a good job so often that their thumb bones fused into that position permanently. The world will never know! 

 

Most of our interpretations of behavior and the like are best guesses. In all seriousness, even if we reproduced the before mentioned Iguanodon, we couldn’t make it use its thumb spikes for the intended purpose hundreds of millions of years ago. It would just have them. Never evolving in an environment where their use was needed.

[Top Trilo]

1 hour ago, Kane said:

there are numerous (and much more sound, ethical) ways to teach people about dinosaurs. Examining fossil remains, books, courses in vertebrate paleontology, museum exhibits, etc., are all far more robust means to learn about dinosaurs than seeing a mutated chicken!  

Don't forget TFF, there are currently over 100,000 topics over 1,2 million posts and at any given time, 1000 people who don't have an account are reading and learning. There really is no better place than TFF

[Daniel Fischer]

22 minutes ago, FossilNerd said:

Putting ethics and morals aside, I still do not see any scientific value to bringing back a long extinct species like dinosaurs, or even large hairy ice age fauna.

 

Would the end result of such experiments even be a dinosaur, or would it be a mutated chicken made to resemble one person’s (or small group’s) vision of how a dinosaur would look, act, be? Sure we know certain things that could be genetically forced upon such a creature based upon study of fossils, such as physics attributes, but the end result is still going to just be something that resembles a dinosaur and not the real thing. It wouldn’t have the same behaviors, mannerisms, instincts, etc. Much of that comes from the environment in which an animal lives and evolves in, and our environment is vastly different than it was 250 million years ago. 
 

So if this did come to fruition what would we learn about dinosaurs? What we think they looked like? We have models, pictures, and diagrams for that. How they act, think, behave? There is no way to accurately know. We find an adult female dino fossilized next to a nest and assume they were good mothers, but what if they are not, and momma (or random female) just happened to be walking by when a mudslide covered them over? What if the dino we think was an aggressive hunter was actually strictly a scavenger and shy around other dinosaurs?

 

Riddle me this...Did Iguanodon use their thumb spikes for defense, to dig, to crack nuts, or was it how they communicated?Maybe they just gave their buddies a thumbs up when they did a good job so often that their thumb bones fused into that position permanently. The world will never know! 

 

Most of our interpretations of behavior and the like are best guesses. In all seriousness, even if we reproduced the before mentioned Iguanodon, we couldn’t make it use its thumb spikes for the intended purpose hundreds of millions of years ago. It would just have them. Never evolving in an environment where their use was needed.

The idea is to only use genes that already exist in a chicken so it won't be made by somebody's vision but I heard that they are planning to use genes that does not exist in a chicken to make a "dinosaur like" tail and when I heard that it was the moment I thought this project is worthless and became as you said a mutated chicken made by someone's vision and not something that is actually close to being some kind of eoraptor or velociraptor. And also I like your theory about iguanodon.