It wasn’t all that long ago that the general public was let in on a little secret—that not all dinosaurs died in some unknown catastrophe. The dinosaur’s descendants still roam among us, having evolved into birds.
Now in How to Build a Dinosaur Jack Horner—one of the eminent paleontologists who broke it to the world that the lowly pigeon was related to the great velociraptor, a scientific advisor on Jurassic Park, and recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant—wants the world to start thinking about making a dinosaur…from a chicken embryo.
Before readers start thinking about the ethical ramifications of what would be done to the poor chicken, Horner reminds readers of what is done to chickens on a regular basis in the food industry. And his plan isn’t to make some freakish chicken monster but to methodically turn on and off different genes in DNA strings. For example, at some point during the chicken embryo’s development, a tail begins to grow, until the genetic code turns off the gene that would further develop the tail. The tail bones then fuse into each other. Theoretically, it would be possible to turn on the tail switch and the chicken would have a tail. And then teeth. And so on. Horner postulates that this will take billions of dollars, but there is really no reason, at least that he can think of, that this cannot be done with technology available right now.
The incredibly interesting thing about How to Build a Dinosaur is that the book is an argument, not a polemic. Horner has written the book in order to open the discussion to see if reverse engineering could become a reality. He’s not saying it should become a reality, but he is really enthusiastic about the possibilities.
While explaining how paleontology has gotten to this point, Horner carefully lays out his argument for reverse engineering a dinosaur throughout the book, but his strongest point is that it would benefit science. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell in what ways it will benefit science. Horner discusses the importance it holds for genetic research, but one would have to have a huge imagination to see its far-reaching implications. What readers will get from this book is how fun it sounds that scientists might actually be able to make a tiny chickenosaurus.
Horner, with co-writer James Gorman, knows all the players, and is uniquely qualified to write a book on reverse evolution. A key scientist in this story is Mary Schweitzer, who discovered remnants of red blood cells on T. Rex bones discovered in eastern Montana. Mary began her career when she became a returning undergrad. A paleontology course led her to volunteer lab work at the Museum of the Rockies under Horner, then on to graduate school. The interesting thing about Schweitzer is that, prior to becoming a paleontologist, she was a proponent of the Young Earth theory, which postulates that the Earth and all its inhabitants were put here 6000 years ago. Although still a devout Christian, she no longer believe the Young Earth theory to be valid, and lectures Christian groups about science and religion, when she’s not studying bones. With the bitter argument continuing between faith and science, Schweitzer is an example of how the two can peaceable coexist. There isn’t any gloating, but the emphasis on her part of the story has a “Yay! One for our team!” quality. Interestingly, it was her research for her master’s dissertation into load-bearing bones of two-legged dinosaurs that opened the doors to reverse evolution. Everything we knew up until that point said that blood cells could not be preserved for sixty million years. Horner says:
Any claim for the discovery of fossil red blood cells that were sixty-plus million years old would be controversial. And Mary, whose ambition was to do a manageable chunk of research to get her master’s, would have to try to prove or disprove the discovery and then defend her findings in a very public way. … It was a bit like being called up from the minor leagues to pitch in Yankee Stadium when you weren’t sure you had control of your curveball yet. … The last thing she wanted, the last thing many graduate students would want, was to research a highly controversial claim for a dissertation. Consequently, Mary held off on telling me about the apparent red blood cell remnants. … Another grad student who has seen the tissue sample told me what was going on, and I called Mary in to talk. … As Mary remembers it, I was furious.
Although How To Build a Dinosaur is tremendously fun and Horner’s excitement shines through the well-written prose, some scientific terms are not explained, like osteoblasts. Sometimes the quotes aren’t attributed, which detracts from the argument. Occasionally some of the text gets overly scientific, which could lose some readers.
No doubt many readers will catch Horner’s enthusiasm and welcome the development of the chickenosaurus. Hopefully, if this dream becomes a reality, humans won’t become slaves to chicken/dino overlords.
(March, 2010)
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