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). 

Brontosaurus is Back!

Bulletin: Heads-up - Ol' Bronto is back!

For Real? What does that really mean? How "back" IS Brontosaurus?

There has been much ado about Brontosaurus lately. Namely, the news of a recent large survey of sauropod dinosaur fossils, published April 7, 2015 by Emanuel Tschopp​, Octávio Mateus and Roger B.J. Benson in the open-access journal PeerJ. This study led its researchers to reassess the demotion of Brontosaurus to invalid status over 100 years ago. Although not accepted by all paleontologists, this recent study determined that Brontosaurus is, in fact, a valid genus after all, distinct from Apatosaurus. Result: Brontosaurus should not have been relegated to being a subspecies of Apatosaurus, but is a distinct genus. 

The naming protocol in naming dinosaur species and genera is that the first name has precedence over subsequent names: if it's determined that two differently named genera or species are actually the same genus or species, then the first-named genus or species sticks and applies to both. 

That's what happened to Brontosaurus, which was originally named in 1879 by its discoverer, Othniel Charles Marsh, as a distinct genus, Brontosaurus excelsus. However, Marsh previously named another discovery two years before this, Apatosaurus ajax, in 1877. In 1903, it was decided that Brontosaurus was actually a subspecies of Apatosaurus - in other words the two dinosaurs were essentially synonymous - one and the same. Apatosaurus was named first, so had precedence and won-out over Brontosaurus in the battle of the names. Henceforth, officially considered a species of Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus lost it's name - until further notice. And, in the process, Ol' Bronto lost it's head - literally. And it turns out the battle was more than in "name" only...

Camarasaurus skull and head life restoration = original but incorrect head of Brontosaurus 

(pre 1970s)

Apatosaurus skull and head life restoration = still the correct head of Brontosaurus 

(1970s-current)

In 1905 - just two years after being officially reclassified as Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus became the first-ever mounted skeleton of a sauropod, exhibited by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Ironically, this great institution decided to label the exhibit Brontosaurus - to capitalize on the famous and popular name - despite Apatosaurus being the newly scientifically accepted name.

To complete the skeleton mount, bones were combined from multiple sauropod specimens, with most of the bones belonging to the namesake of the exhibit: Brontosaurus excelsus. But this nearly-complete skeleton lacked a key ingredient: a head. Since no confirmed skull existed for Brontosaurus, the museum had to improvise for the head. It was not known what the head of a brontosaur actually looked like. So the exhibit designers guessed. Brontosaurus was a very heavy, stoutly-built sauropod - in contrast to its relatively slender yet longer cousin, Diplodocus. Consequently, they assumed that the skull must have been equally stout and sturdy - unlike the elongated "delicate" head of Diplodocus. Therefore, the museum hand-sculpted a custom-designed skull based on the best available reference: the thickly-built, robust, blunt-nosed Camarasaurus skull found nearby the source site of the exhibit's brontosaur skeleton. It was a considered a safe bet that the features of the Camarasaurus skull would be similar to whatever skull Brontosaurus really had. Thus, the original head used in the first-ever brontosaur exhibit actually belonged to another, quite different, sauropod, Camarasaurus. Although incorrect, this went on to become the model for Brontosaurus going forward. The rest is history, as far as "Bronto" in pop culture is concerned.

Meanwhile, in 1909 an Apatosaurus skull was apparently found by the Carnegie Museum at Dinosaur National Monument (Eastern Utah/Western Colorado). The skull was found near a skeleton identified as the new species Apatosaurus louisae. The skull was very similar to the skull of Diplodocus - elongated with a narrow, flattened snout - unlike the stout, short-faced skull of Camarasaurus that was incorrectly hijacked by Brontosaurus. Interestingly, the new, Diplodocus-like skull was not used on the Carnegie Museum mount of Apatosaurus louisae, which was left headless, pending yet further proof.  In fact, the Carnegie mount was eventually crowned with - of all things - yet another incorrect, old-school, Camarasaurus skull in 1934 (virtually repeating the mistake made by the original AMNH Brontosaurus exhibit!), by misguided museum staff.

Much time passed without definitive apatosaur-brontosaur head upgrades. Finally, the Apatosaurus skull was formally referenced scientifically in the 1970s, when John Stanton McIntosh and David Berman redescribed the skulls of Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. They determined that the 1909 slender Diplodocus-like skull was accurately attributed to Apatosaurus; and in fact, many Diplodocus skulls may actually belong to apatosaurs. In 1979, the first true, slender Diplodocus-like, skull was mounted on an Apatosaurus skeleton, at the Carnegie Museum. In 2011, the first specimen of Apatosaurus was found articulated with a skull and its cervical vertebrae intact; comprised of an elongated, Diplodocus-like head and sharing a majority of skeletal features with those of the original, apatosaur "type-specimen", Apatosaurus ajax, discovered by Marsh in 1877. Apatosaurus was finally confirmed as possessing the elongated, flat-snouted head similar to Diplodocus. 

Throughout this journey, ever since being reassigned as Apatosaurus in 1903, the head of Brontosaurus has shared the fate of Apatosaurus. The mighty Brontosaurus was similarly verified as having the elongated, flat-snouted skull of Apatosaurus - not the old-school, stout, blunt-headed skull of Camarasaurus, that once was the hallmark of Ol' Bronto. And so things have remained, in name and form, until the study and status upgrade of 2015. As a result of this study, the Brontosaurus-as-Apatosaurus designation is called into question. The mighty Brontosaurus is back and "lives" again - sort-of...

Dino fans familiar with the classic, original image of the "Bronto" as a long necked sauropod with the stout, blunt-head cheered the resurrection of Brontosaurus as a valid genus. However, in key respects, the new "Bronto" is still not the same brontosaur portrayed in countless old-school life restorations in movies, TV cartoons, books - even the famous Sinclair gas station logo. The main difference between the original, "classic" brontosaur; and the newly, resurrected version, is all in the head....

There are many varieties of sauropods - all share the most basic morphological features of having proportionally long necks and tails, mounted on hefty torsos supported by four pillar-like legs. However, among the most distinguishing features differentiating species are the differences in the SHAPE of their HEADS...

The new 2015 study does nothing to restore the "classic" short-nosed, bluntly box-shaped head of the "classic" Brontosaurus familiar to generations of dinosaur fans. In fact, the "new" Brontosaurus is still firmly classified squarely in the same general group as Apatosaurus (family = Diplodocidae / subfamily = Apatosaurinae). So even if the newly resurrected classification of Brontosaurus sticks, it still won't LOOK like the original, familiar Brontosaurus possessing a stout, blunt-headed Camarasaurus head - the incorrect head attached to the original Brontosaurus mount that forever established the appearance of Brontosaurus in the public eye (despite having the incorrect head). Now - flying in the face of all the "Bronto is back" buzz - the newly resurrected brontosaur retains not the familiar (yet incorrect) stout-faced head of Camarasaurus, but the more elongated, flattened-snout head morphology of Apatosaurus - the very same Apatosaurus that bumped Brontosaurus from valid status back in 1903. Hence, since the head is among the most obvious, distinguishing characteristics differentiating sauropod dinosaurs, for all practical, empirical purposes - in terms of appearance - the newly resurrected Brontosaurus still remains more Apatosaurus than "Brontosaurus" - and according to some paleontologists, still actually IS Apatosaurus.