Possible dinosaur DNA has been found

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/possible-dinosaur-dna-has-been-found/

by bookofjoe • 6 years ago

240 114 6 years ago

syntaxing• 6 years ago

This is a naive question...but let's just say we do have the DNA, is Jurrasic park possible with today's technology?! I remember reading that someone was trying to inseminate an elephant with mammoth sperm a couple years ago but failed. Not sure if it was because the sample was super old or it just doesn't work.

aphextron• 6 years ago

It's a completely impossible fantasy. DNA has a half life of ~500 years. Mammoths only died out around 10,000 years ago, which is why it's conceivable that one could be brought back, but all dinosaur DNA has been destroyed for millions of years.

adequateness• 6 years ago

That is what was thought but if the finding in the article turns out to be true then that might need to be reevaluated.

zabeltech3• 6 years ago

What if the DNA was frozen?

multiplegeorges• 6 years ago

You say this as an absolute, but this very article is describing a case where it might have been found.

It's unlikely, we'll see.

jhayward• 6 years ago

all dinosaur DNA has been destroyed for millions of years

.. Except for the DNA that has survived and been passed down to living species today.

TuringNYC2• 6 years ago

> DNA has a half life of ~500 years.

Could you describe half life here? So suppose the strands are now small snippets. If you find enough, couldnt you overlap common parts and eventually re-construct the full length?

BrandonM• 6 years ago

Bringing back mammoths based only on DNA seems to me to be akin to bringing back a New Yorker based only on DNA, thousands of years after NYC no longer exists. Even with perfect DNA, I think we underestimate the role that social structure and ecological momentum play in even the simplest of creatures. I think humans are the rule and not the exception when it comes to learning after birth.

And that's not even getting into the complex interaction between a mother and her unborn child, including cytoplasm, mitochondrial RNA, etc. It's not like an organism springs whole cloth from DNA alone.

fenwick67• 6 years ago

What about mammoths or passenger pigeons, then?

phiresky• 6 years ago

DNA has a half life of ~500 years

but:

Researchers in 2016 measured chloroplast DNA in marine sediment cores, and found diatom DNA dating back to 1.4 million years.[62] This DNA had a half-life significantly longer than previous research, of up to 15,000 years. Kirkpatrick's team also found that DNA only decayed along a half-life rate until about 100 thousand years, at which point it followed a slower, power-law decay rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA#Non-human_aDNA

grecy• 6 years ago

Alright, let's just pretend the DNA was somehow snap frozen or preserved to make it still useable.

With today's technology could we create a creature from long ago with nothing more than it's DNA?

credit_guy• 6 years ago

DNA has a half life of ~500 years

DNA is not a radioactive material. It decays, but there's no absolute law like the radioactive decay, where the half life is the same for every microgram of the same substance everywhere in the world. The average half-life may be 500 years, but there can be situations where the DNA is exceptionally well preserved due to local circumstances. As a simple analogy: the average half life of a human settlement is, let's say 50 years. That means we should see absolutely no traces of human settlements older than 2000 years (40 half-lives). That is far from true.

neilwilson• 6 years ago

It would die near instantly anyway. Very likely modern bacteria and viruses would overwhelm the creature's immune systems.

londons_explore3• 6 years ago

The same argument could apply when you take plants or animals from one continent to another when those continents haven't been connected for tens of millions of years.

Yet somehow camels or kangaroos seem to have no trouble living in each others environments.

In fact, you see a bit of the reverse - Banana skin rapidly decomposes in tropical forests where bananas grow, but take one to frigid Norway and drop a banana skin in a forest and you'll still be able to find it in 5 years, while local stuff is decomposing around it.

koeng• 6 years ago

Possible? Yes. Practical? Not for 2-3 decades when DNA synthesis capacity gets good enough to synthesize full animal genomes. In terms of raw synthesis power, we do have the ability to synthesize billions of base pairs, but you're going to need other infrastructure around it.

Also, immune problems I don't think would be a huge issue, the adaptive immune system has been around for a while.

joyj2nd2• 6 years ago

" we do have the ability to synthesize billions of base pairs" This is a valid point. We don't have the technology yet. There was once an SBIR opening for long DNA synthesis but I did not keep track of it. But, given we have the technology it still would not be enough. To slowly make an elephant a mammoth. Yes. Maybe. But making a Tyrannosaurus Rex from scratch is tricky, you also need cells, mitochondria, DNA methylation etc.

kuprel• 6 years ago

If we could synthesize the dinosaur DNA, would a chicken be able to hatch a dinosaur egg if we injected it in the right place?

djmips• 6 years ago

Whenever this comes up I wonder why no one mentions any associated symbiotic bacteria that might also be necessary for a dinosaur to live. Is it accepted that they could live without any additional microorganisms from the same time period?

RedComet3• 6 years ago

I love how not only the time of existence but also its size and appearance are presented as undisputable facts.

jstimpfle2• 6 years ago

Yeah and it's so wrong! Would they have checked the bible they'd agree that the earth is 6000 years old.

RedComet3• 6 years ago

What a stooge.

zabeltech3• 6 years ago

And flat obviously

dang• 6 years ago

Please don't do this here.

echelon2• 6 years ago

I love how not only the time of existence but also its size and appearance are presented as undisputable facts.

All evidence and models across a large variety of disciplines points to the age of the fossils. Geological strata, carbon isotope ratios, phylogenetics, etc.

Feel free to present your evidence so that we can weigh in.

RedComet3• 6 years ago

Unfortunately, unlike the author of the first reply implied, I don't have a grand religious take on the issue. I'm simply criticizing what passes for "science" these days. Even if someone grants you all of the evidence you presented, we see regularly that discoveries of this sort are false - be it from contamination in the lab or just an overzealous lab coat.

That said, I can give you a tasty nugget if you want. I reject using uniformitarianism (ad infinitum) as a scientific axiom. And I scoff at the arrogance of my fellow academics, especially for presenting stories such as these as fact.

Splendor• 6 years ago

Yet first, paleontologists need to confirm that these possible genetic traces are the real thing.

As is common with science articles, the headline doesn't quite match reality.

chc• 6 years ago

The headline says possible dinosaur DNA has been found, and that quote agrees that these samples are possibly dinosaur DNA. That seems to match.

echelon2• 6 years ago

Or bacterial DNA.

I think samples need to be isolated and sequenced before we know what we're dealing with.

zabeltech3• 6 years ago

Life will find a way

0-_-0• 6 years ago

The little kid in me got excited for a second seeing the headline

chrisco255• 6 years ago

We just take the missing pieces and fill in frog DNA, right?

roywiggins3• 6 years ago

"At best, their biological makers seem to be degraded remnants of genes that cannot be read—broken-down components rather than intact parts of a sequence."

So... what good does that do?

tynpeddler• 6 years ago

Homology studies. A DNA strand 17 bp long is pretty distinct. If a strand that long or longer was found, we would gain a lot of information about the evolutionary history of dinosaurs that we could never get from fossils.

However, the article isn't clear about what they found. It says DNA, then it says there may not be a recoverable sequence. In that case nucleic acids would be a better term than DNA. Without more info on what stain they used to identify the "DNA", the implications of this research are hard to figure out.

roywiggins3• 6 years ago

"broken down components" reads like loose nucleic acids to me, rather than actual DNA fragments

crimsonalucard• 6 years ago

I think by what "good does that do?" he means like what's the point if you can't use it to create dinosaur clones Jurassic Park style.

I literally clicked on the link because that was the only thing on my mind. Not joking.

burtonator• 6 years ago

There was a paper not long ago saying that the DNA half life is about 500k years or so and that most of the DNA would be degraded.

The issue I had with this is why can't we reassemble chunks of DNA like we can with a puzzle.

I'm certain specialized algorithms exist within DNA analysis for this reason. This isn't my field and there are already algorithms that exist on the top of my head that could solve this issue.

The main issue is that you'd have to find a LOT of DNA to build one complete strand and you wouldn't have one strand from one specific animal.

... but you'd have a rough picture.

bosswipe• 6 years ago

What they found is structures that looked like cells under a microscope: https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/200008005/nwz206f... Section C shows cell-like structures and D shows the hypothesised DNA-like structure. They compare with a modern Emu's microstructures in section G.

They also applied a stain to the fossil and compared it to a stained emu bone here https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/200008014/nwz206f...

varenc2• 6 years ago

The article is a bit inconsistent on its claims. But in the paper the authors seem to say that intact DNA sequences could exist:

"... to this date, the possible preservation of original proteins and DNA in deep time has not been convincingly eliminated with data."

"Our data support the hypothesis that calcified cartilage is preserved at the molecular level in this Mesozoic material, and suggest that remnants of once-living chondrocytes, including their DNA, may preserve for millions of years."

https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwz206/

joering2• 6 years ago

Well, some of that stuff can be replaced with other animals DNA, like frogs /j

throwaway888abc• 6 years ago

" Such potential tatters of ancient DNA are not exactly Jurassic Park–quality. "

All right then.

buboard• 6 years ago

Well we still have chicken

rootsudo• 6 years ago

I saw a movie about this once, can't remember the ending...

masonic2• 6 years ago

The chaos theory dude is discredited and ends up peddling apartments on TV under pseudonyms.

rzimmerman• 6 years ago

Bingo

irrational• 6 years ago

I have some eggs and chicken breasts in my fridge if anyone needs some dinosaur DNA.

gok• 6 years ago

Bingo!

darepublic• 6 years ago

I'm sorry but I keep thinking of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h58lRIVHhGc

baybal2• 6 years ago

Why would they wait, and no shove it into the sequencer if this is the case?

With modern sequencing technology, shouldn't they be able to detect strands of base pairs much shorter than in the past?

arthurcolle• 6 years ago

They spared no expense.

csvan• 6 years ago

Young Earth Creationists are going to have a field day with this.

parentheses• 6 years ago

commence jurassic park 2020

tunnuz• 6 years ago

Life finds a way.

gjsman-1000• 6 years ago

Okay, quick and honest question: How does this support / not support the theory of young earth creationism? For someone who believes that the earth is 6000 or so years old, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed, and that DNA doesn't last nearly _that long_, this seems like pretty definite proof of that being possible. Counterpoint?

digitaltrees• 6 years ago

That rests on the premise that dna doesn’t last that long. But maybe it does and that premise is wrong. Alternatively radio carbon dating must be wrong and with it large parts of chemistry. So I would weigh the strengths of both and maybe scrutinize each premise for their respective scientific basis.

throwaway2048• 6 years ago

Young earth creationism isn't predicated on any kind of consistent or logical position.

Its advocates almost without exception, do not give a shit about the facts, and you aren't going to sway them with another few pebbles added to the absolute mountain of evidence that their position is flawed.

Debating them like their position has merit and is reasonable is a hopeless waste of time, and is in fact exactly what they want because it puts their position on level footing with the scientific consensus.

pfarnsworth• 6 years ago

Whatever happened to the finding 10+ years ago, where scientists found jellified T-Rex bone marrow? It made a huge splash, and they claimed to be able to see structures in the blood, etc, but I haven't heard anything since, and I can't find any follow up research, or I don't know what to google for.

Has anyone seen any followups to this?

29athrowaway• 6 years ago

There's dinosaur DNA in every bird.

http://tolweb.org/Dinosauria/14883

colinnordin• 6 years ago

Assuming we had millions of 3D-scans of different kinds of animals and their full DNA sequence. Wouldn't it be interesting to try to use generative ML methods to generate a dinosaur DNA based on a 3D model?

antonzabirko• 6 years ago

seems oddly familiar. sure let's do it

moobsen• 6 years ago

Are you referring to a movie? Which one?

Or something like this? https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.06148

netjiro• 6 years ago

Fun idea, but I think you're underestimating the total systemic information density between DNA and final body.

But I'm sure you can start there and find some interesting tangent that can very well turn out to be worth pursuing further.

malux85• 6 years ago

There’s just no way this would work, the DNA codes organs, proteins and all of the complex molecules and molecular interactions, there’s no way a generative model is going to glean all that from 3D scans.

andbberger2• 6 years ago

I suppose everything looks like a nail when you've got a few GPUs.

Besides, the sequence alone is not the full state. You have to also consider expression and regulation and all that; epigenetics.

DavidSJ• 6 years ago

I wonder:

Could you normally have two viable lineages, each with the same DNA, and each with a different expression of that DNA which is stably conserved over many generations, purely due to womb environment, etc.? In other words, if you cloned a woolly mammoth using an elephant surrogate, might the great great great great grandchildren of this clone still have some characteristics that are due to having an elephant surrogate ancestor?

Or would there be a tendency to converge to a single stable expression due entirely to genetics?

It‘s obvious that in principle the answer could go either way, but I’m not sure whether that’s true in practice, with naturally occurring organisms and naturally occurring DNA sequences. For the sake of this question, one is also tempted to exclude post-natal “cultural” transmission, but it’s not clear that can be easily distinguished.

EmilioMartinez3• 6 years ago

Sounds like you want to make dinosaur-shaped dogs

elwell• 6 years ago

Using sophisticated techniques, they extract the preserved blood and bingo! Dino DNA!

Taniwha• 6 years ago

Yeah, but scientists are so preoccupied with whether or not they could make dinosaurs without stopping to think if they should.

EmilioMartinez3• 6 years ago

By now they pretty much agreed that they should

fortyseven• 6 years ago

Dino-sour!

Possible dinosaur DNA has been found

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