Mwahahahahahahahahahaha! That is the noise I imagine the mad scientists who thought up this latest bit of badass insanity made when they hatched their plan to create dinosaurs out of chickens. If you’ve seen Jurassic Park, you know that all you need to create your very own dinosaur is a tiny bit of DNA extracted from an ancient fossilized mosquito. Unfortunately, that is completely false. Fortunately, however, famed paleontologist Jack Horner and his loyal band of minions fellow scientists have come up with the theory that, if you regress chicken DNA far enough back (aka about 10 million years), it could have a very similar effect.
As chickens are the easiest to obtain and breed close living relatives of the late, great dinosaur, Horner theorizes that tweaking their genes when they’re still in embryo (a time when they tend to still have “long dinosaury tails and hands instead of wings”) will bring out some of their more prehistoric traits. Using a process called genetic regression, their plan is to engineer the type of chicken whose “dinosaur” traits won’t disappear as they develop. In the past they’ve already been able to create a chicken with teeth using similar methods.
Part of me thinks this is going to be really awesome. The other part of me is a little worried the world will soon be overrun by giant franken-chickens, pecking away at everything in sight and waving their tiny little T-Rex arms in anger…Which still might be kind of awesome, so…wash.
For more information on Horner’s vision for the project, watch his TED Talk:
(I Heart Chaos via DVice)
