Mark Noonan (mail) (www):
Astounding! And wonderful, into the bargain. We can't even begin to figure out what we might learn if this is really biological material from the actual dinosaur...and if we could even get a partial piece of DNA....just too much.

Love this stuff.
3.31.2005 6:32am
Kevin D:
Once we clone our T-Rex army all they'll need are a laser beams attached to their frickin' foreheads and we're well on our way to phasing out humans for military conflicts!
3.31.2005 6:50am
Mike "Veeshir" Fisher (mail):
I saw that they were also encouraging other museums and scientists with T-Rex bones to open them up and see if the phenomenon is widespread.
That would be cool. There has to be some animal they could use to lay any eggs they get from cloning.

I don't agree with Jeff Goldblum's character about how, "Nature decided the dinosaurs should die so it would be wrong to revive them."
I would go to Jurassic Park in a heartbeat.

I would love to see us start to clone lots of extinct animals. From dinosaurs to mammoths to dodos.
Then we Republicans could rape the environment and destroy all the species and then we could just remake them. /sarcasm>
3.31.2005 6:54am
Paul Burgess (www):
Lawyers in outhouses should watch out.
3.31.2005 7:04am
Robert B.:
Dean: While I'm sure the spin might annoy you, http://news.bbc.co.uk appears to very timely science reporting.

For example, your T-Rex story was reported last week ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4379577.stm

and today they are talking about brain implants

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4396387.stm

which sounds like something out of Neuromancer.

The thing about bias and spin is that just about everything has a mixture of fact and opinion. I have a very vague memory of one of the peanuts characters (I believe Linus) reading "The Brothers Karamazov" who had some good advice. When asked how he managed the long and complicated Russian names, he said he just "bleeped right over them".

Very Kindest Regards,
Robert
3.31.2005 10:35am
Solomon Mason (mail) (www):
Off da hook. Back in my kiddie days (when I was acting like a kid), I was in love with Stegosaurus. Something about that spiked tail and the spikes all along it's back was cool. Heck, all Dinosaurs are cool. :)
3.31.2005 10:42am
Scott Kirwin (mail) (www):
Agreed - mega cool factor.
Screw Jurrasic Park. Clone 'em! That could sure put an end to the pesky neighbor's barking dog. And the pesky neighbor!
3.31.2005 11:08am
B. Durbin (www):
They didn't find a fragment of femur; they had to break a femur (very reluctantly) so that it would fit into the helicopter they were using to airlift the skeleton out.
3.31.2005 11:39am
Hank Barnes (mail):
Hah!

What makes you brainiacs think that from DNA, you can magically create the entire organism?:) How you gonna create the proteins, let alone the first cell?

Also, what about the time factor? If an adult dinosaur is 30 years old, will it take, say, 30 years to grow one from a DNA specimen?

Further, why can't we take some DNA from Dean Esmay and grow another intrepid blogger?

[Runs from console, worried that some young genius grad student will supply answers, making old Hank look more stupid than usual:)]

Hank Barnes

p.s. This sounds like an interesting paleontological find, so Bravo!
3.31.2005 3:48pm
Dean Esmay:
Oh, I would agree that cloning is very unlikely. Just having the DNA isn't enough, and it's unlikey a complete genome can be recovered. Although just fragments would probably tell quite a lot of information.
3.31.2005 5:49pm
Mark Noonan (mail) (www):
Dean,

True - like were the warm or cold-blooded...might be able to find out what they ate, and what the overall environment was like back then; just endlessly fascinating stuff....Pure science is Da Bomb....
4.1.2005 5:14am