Most people have either seen or read the famous book Jurassic Park. Within it, it includes an inspiring idea that tells of a possibility of getting a  glimpse at Earth’s past and also horrific nightmares of what might happen if we were to attempt the construction of such a park. While reading the book, the idea is that  you could take a blood-sucking insect out of a preserving piece of amber, and draw the dinosaur’s blood from within it. Then you would have the DNA to clone the dinosaur that lived at that time, but yet the question remains…  is it realistic?

With today’s technology, we probably wouldn’t be able to accomplish such a feat. Michael Crichton’s idea, however ingenious and clever, will not work. Many agree that it is probably the most feasible idea out there for collecting ‘dino-DNA’, but even with his wonderful idea, we don’t even come close.

A creature’s DNA is destroyed when all of its organic material has been broken down. After that, no more DNA of that specific creature’s body exists. Over 60 million years have passed since the dinosaur’s rule ended, and even though it takes a long time for all the DNA off of a creature to disappear, DNA just can’t exist over that expanse of a time.

“Why don’t we just use fossils?” Well this is because fossils don’t have any DNA on or within them. A fossil is formed when minerals  replace the organic material over time. In this process, almost all DNA is destroyed, leaving nothing behind. So it becomes very apparent that we wouldn’t be able to use a method such as this.

“So, will we ever see a living dinosaur ever again?” We certainly won’t see one that was created with the original DNA taken from an actual dinosaur, but don’t completely despair. Instead of looking to the past, many scientists have started to look to the present. If you ever heard that the chicken is a pretty close relative to the T-Rex, then you might know where this is going.

Scientists have learned to modify and even reverse the DNA time line. DNA doesn’t really change a whole lot over the years. It’s mainly just minor mutations over time that eventually creates a new species. Humans for instance share 99.9% of the exact same DNA. While humans and chimps share about 98% of our DNA. In fact, 25% of our DNA is actually the exact same as a daffodil.

OK, so the point that I’m mainly trying to get across is that it wouldn’t take much modifying to turn a chicken into a T-Rex, because most of the physical changes that occur is because of how long certain traits are turned on.  A giraffe doesn’t necessarily have a longer neck than humans because it has a completely different piece of DNA, it’s because the ‘neck length trait’ is just simply turned on for a longer period of time.

So is Jurassic Park realistic? Will we ever see a living dinosaur ever again? Probably not with real dinosaur DNA. However, when we learn more about genetics, we may be able to reverse the DNA and create our very own dinosaurs. But as of right now, it remains science fiction.