Dino-Chicken or Frankensaurus (Potato Head-A-Saurus?)

Seriously?

In May the stunning news of scientists successfully "turning on" dinosaur features in chicken embryos lit up the media (study published May 12 in the online journal Evolution; by Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, Yale University and Arhat Abzhanov, Harvard University). A result of eight years of study, their work focuses on the genetic factors responsible for the dinosaur premaxillae "snout" bones evolving into a beak. In their paper, Bhullar and Abzhanov assert that they have performed the first-ever evolutionary reversal of a bird skull, as they reverse-engineered the beaks of modern chicken embryos into their supposedly ancestral dinosaur-like snouts. For many people this is welcome news: one step closer to witnessing a living breathing dinosaur - or at least the closest possible thing...

Let's be clear - this is not Jurassic Park (or Jurassic World). The method used by the scientists on the chickens in their real-world experiments are different than that used in Jurassic Park - Jurassic World. Whereas in the Jurassic Park - World saga pieces of actual dino DNA was discovered (in the blood of amber-preserved mosquitos) and inserted into living animal embryos to create dinosaur clone hybrids, in the real-life case of the "dino-chicken" experiments the chickens had their own already-existing genetics physically rewired to create specific dinosaur-like features that would appear when the chickens hatched - no dino DNA was used.

There's no question the sheer technology involved in the chicken-to-dinosaur research is a dramatic achievement. The procedure involved chemically "turning on" theoretically "recessive dinosaur" DNA", one feature at a time. In this case, enabling non-beak nasal-facial bones (and, in follow-up work, teeth) to grow on a living chicken. But, as exciting as the potential is, the question needs asking:  just what ARE the scientists really "turning on"? In playing "god" with genetics, the choices are arbitrary. We can selectively alter the anatomy of animals - albeit laboriously - via tweaking the genetic code of the animal's DNA until we get the desired result. In short, creating "designer animals". 

Since we do have explicit fossil evidence of what many dinosaurs fundamentally looked like - we have accurate dinosaur fossil references - we CAN fiddle with the DNA of living animals - tweaking this and that - until we more or less match the structural features of these dinosaur references. But, ultimately, what we end up with is just a chicken possessing some arbitrarily designed weird features that remotely resemble those of some dinosaur species. A freak. A "Frankensaurus".

This is not the only study to tinker with bird genetics. An earlier study succeeded in generating the rudiments of teeth, as well as a short bony tail, in chicken embryos; using similar methods as the current study.

We may be able to "channel" a few selected aspects of dinosaurs, but the jury is still out on whether recessive genes for teeth and tail vertebrae actually have any literal ancestral connection to dinosaurs - they may be recessive genes of another ancestral path. 

And even if we can manifest pseudo dinosaur teeth and tails on chickens, we are far away from turning on the rest of the skeletal structure, hands, feet, skin coloring and patterns - in many cases, feathers - even internal organs, of dinosaurs . We need to know exactly what those elements are, genetically, and how to restore them before we come even close to resurrecting anything accurately resembling a dinosaur.

So yeah - we may be able to create living animals that seem to resemble dinosaurs - in part. But they are not dinosaurs - they remain - in this case, chickens: altered chickens. Especially at this early stage of this kind of experimentation - where only one or two aspects of anatomy are altered. Much work remains to be done. And it's complicated: you can't just turn off beaks and turn on teeth in chic embryos and then pronounce "Voila! Dinosaur!!!" Maybe you start by turning off the beak, then adjust the other bones of the head to accommodate teeth, new kinds of jaw muscles, etc. That's just a beginning - of a very, very long path of reverse engineering. In approximating the skulls of dinosaurs, the scientists involved in reworking chicken skull anatomy are acting the role of Dr. Frankenstein (Dr. Frankensaur?) more than they may care to acknowledge.

Since the chickens are being altered in part only - bits and pieces - they end up neither chicken or dinosaur. Maybe it's more accurate to call the resulting creatures "frankensaurs". Or "feakensaurs"! After all, these animals are freaks - not of nature, but freaks of man.

The Other Resurrection:

Attempts to resurrect extinct animals are not limited to turning chickens into dinosaurs. As it turns out, the artificial, arbitrary, selective procedure employed in altering chicken DNA is only one method of attempting to restore extinct animals to life. Another approach is also currently underway, as several teams of scientists around the world are closing-in on successfully bringing the extinct woolly mammoth back to life. However, their method is radically different that used in the "dino-chicken" work. Instead of trial and error tinkering with the DNA of living animals feature by feature, the mammoth method is to find the actual, real DNA - of actual, real mammoths - still intact in frozen specimens preserved in glaciers and permafrost worldwide; and then inject it into the embryonic cells of modern elephants. This procedure is commonly known as "cloning". Although cloning has its own ethical detractors, it is a very direct and "pure" process, that has been successfully done numerous times in replicating living animals.

Elephants are the closest living relatives of mammoths, and we are fortunate that we have such close mammoth cousins still alive today. This maximizes the effectiveness of the cloning process. The resulting mammoth offspring will be virtual clones of their extinct ancestors - almost exact head-to-tail duplicates. This approach is vastly superior to the chicken-tinkering approach for accurately resurrecting extinct animals, since the actual, still intact mammoth DNA code is being used. It's an elegant, direct process. In a simplified sense, all that's being done is the actual mammoth DNA is being incubated back to life. The prehistoric flash-frozen mammoth DNA is being transferred to the surrogate cells of living elephants: modern elephants will function as surrogate mothers giving birth to real, fully intact, woolly mammoths. 

Compare this to the years and years of trial and error in tinkering with chicken DNA, yielding only spotty and roughly approximate reiterations of dinosaur features in modern chickens...

Ironically, it's the mammoth cloning approach that's most similar to the genetic procedure used in Jurassic Park-World, where dino DNA was inserted into the embryos of living animals - in their case, frogs (considered close enough kin to dinosaurs to be good cloning incubators).

Unlike the arbitrary, designer-chicken "frankensaurs", with their selective bits and pieces of artificially recreated dinosaur-like anatomy, the resulting resurrected woolly mammoths will actually BE real, fundamentally whole, woolly mammoths. Those mammoths will be born from FOUND, viably intact, actual mammoth DNA - not INVENTED, artificially rearranged genetic markers, as in the case of the "chickensaurs". The mammoths will be, in essence, the real deal. The "chickensaurus" will be a false dinosaur...

Don't get me wrong - as a dino fan, I am fascinated-by and interested in seeing the results of the dino-chicken research and experiments. However, that selective, arbitrary approach will not fully satisfy my perfectionist, purist passion for real dinosaurs. As sensational as the dino-chicken-frankensaur work is, it's only a pale approximation that won't fully satisfy - at least not at this early stage of that kind of "tinkering" genetic work.

On the other hand, the mammoth cloning truly excites me, since the results will be the birth of real, wholly intact, woolly mammoths - the first births in some 10,000 years.

Ultimately, despite the drawbacks of the chicken-to-dinosaur experiments, its research will surely lead to refinements and breakthroughs; and future results may prove much more demonstrably accurate. And although this kind of work makes for good sound bites, the work is not done for the media - it is bona-fide research intended to contribute to our knowledge of evolution overall - not just dinosaurs and their relationship to modern animals. In this respect, it's all good. And will undoubtedly lead to advances that will provide more accurate "restoration/resurrection" techniques, and more complete insight to the real-life appearance of dinosaurs.

And, for the record, the authors of the the Yale-Harvard chicken study are quick to point out that their work is not an effort to resurrect dinosaurs, “Our goal here was to understand the molecular underpinnings of an important evolutionary transition, not to create a ‘dino-chicken’ simply for the sake of it” (Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, Yale News, May 12, 2015).