Bad news for those who wanted to visit dinosaur parks in the future...

[Fudzy]

Scientists have discovered that DNA has a half life of just under a millennium.

Nature reports that researchers in New Zealand have ruined one of your more cherished secret hopes today with the announcement that DNA, the blueprint of life, the sketchpad onto which every living thing is doodled, does not last very long. Specifically, it has a half-life of 521 years. Which means that unless Henry VIII rode a stegosaurus into battle, we're never going be able to clone a dinosaur. Which, in turn, means that your beautiful Jurassic Park dreams have just been crushed with Jurassic Park III levels of disappointment.

http://www.gizmodo.com/5950500/science-just-killed-any-hope-you-ever-had-of-jurassic-park-being-real

 

[Slootvreter]

No need to tell you that you HAVE to add the source

 

[Fudzy]

No need to tell you that you HAVE to add the source

DOOOH! What a rookie error. Adding it now.

 

[Geriatrix]

That's OK, they're going to make Chickensaurus-Rex's anyway.

 

[Jola]

Now what is the implication of that for the DNA of woolly mammoths, probably 20 000 years old ?

Another complete one was discovered a few weeks ago, with frozen flesh still intact !

 

[porchrat]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Now what is the implication of that for the DNA of woolly mammoths, probably 20 000 years old ?

Another complete one was discovered a few weeks ago, with frozen flesh still intact !

Just because there might still be something vaguely recognisable as fleshy bits there that doesn't mean that the genetic material is still viable.

Besides freezing a cell, unless done under very specific conditions will result in cell lysis (popping or bursting).

 

[patrick]

So I'm not going to be able to ride a triceritops to work

 

[chrisc]

The woolly mammoth just about makes it in terms of DNA elegibility. All we need is another rich wallie like the one in Queensland in Australia to create one in his lab

 

[GreyBush]

well scratch that off the bucket list.

 

[thestaggy]

And I had such grand ideas of how to make Jurassic Park safe, with back-up systems backing back-up systems, Dr. Malcolm's chaos theories be damned! I obsessed over that movie & dinosaurs in general as a youngster.